


Clover

by inky_starlight



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Descriptions of violence but relatively non-graphic, Gen, Road Trips, agency, general creepy stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7006057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inky_starlight/pseuds/inky_starlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They could see things. They saw what was wrong, the unnatural happenings of their home towns. Clover took notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Minseok had sat at the same booth in the diner nearly every day after school. He was old enough now to be home by himself but there wasn’t much point. At least if he stayed here and waited for his mom to get off work he could eat without having to wait or make it himself, and he could at least see his mom this way. The diner was never very busy, almost always someone inside but the booths were never full, so the manager didn’t mind. She was nice, an older lady with gray hair always looking like it was about to escape the bun she had it in, with the permanent smell of cigarettes on her clothes and a deep voice that always seemed to be peppy, no matter what mood she was in. Whenever he came in with a good report card, she’d give him free ice cream. She gave him ice cream no matter what the report card looked like, so he wasn’t sure if he always had good grades or if sometimes it was pity ice cream.

He had sat in the same booth for so long that he had the diner’s routine memorized. There was a sort of routine to the place, most of the people who came in were regulars, although there was the occasional person, or couple, or family who had wandered in off the highway, lured in by the promise of cleaner bathrooms than the gas station and food that wasn’t M&M’s and bagged popcorn. But mostly it was the same people: a high school girl with long brown hair and white flats long stained by the dirt outside, accompanied by her grandfather, shuffling in beside her in his button up shirts and truck driver cap; the man who lived under the bridge by the car lot always came in around 4:00, sat at the counter, and the manager would always give him a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs; an elderly couple who’d been coming in right at 5:00 to the second for as long as Minseok could remember. They looked and acted like they’d been coming in right at 5:00 ever since he’d been born, maybe as long as the diner had been open. There was a group of truck drivers that always came in on Wednesday nights, swapping stories about where they’d been that week in that way that said they were trying to top each other on the craziest road story.

No one ever really talked to Minseok, at least, not any more than asking him what his homework was. He liked the grandfather who came in with the high school girl the best. He’d never sit down, but if Minseok was working on a book report or a science project he’d explain it to the grandfather, who’d simply say things like “oh!” and “I see” while Minseok talked, and once he was finished, would simply say:

“Well that’s alright!” in a way that sounded like he was proud of him and thought he was doing a good job.

Minseok had been sitting at the same booth, the one next to the side exit and up against the wall, every school night since he’d started kindergarten, so of course he noticed when the woman came in. She stood out like a red flag: too clean, too official. Her polished heels looked alien next to the high school girl’s dirty white flats, her pressed blouse out of place with the peeling plastic material of the booths, her clean, orderly bun looked like it belonged in a different universe than the truck driver’s hats and the manager’s gray frizzy hair.

The woman never talked to him, never even approached him, but she stared. Not enough to draw attention to herself, and sometimes when he looked at her he’d see her looking at something else, so it wasn’t constant, but just enough to make him uneasy. But nothing ever came of it; she left long before he and his mom did, he never saw her shiny gray car anywhere near his house or school, never saw her while he read under the old tree in the school’s playground at recess or even in the trailer park his house was in. Just at the diner.

She’d been coming in, like she was a new regular, for several days. Pleasant to his mom while she took the woman’s order, but when the food came the woman ate it almost mechanically. Not quite like a machine, but like she got no enjoyment from it. Like she ate solely because the act of eating and consuming the food on her plate was necessary for human survival. She didn’t grimace, or react badly in any way. She just ate.

He wasn’t sure if he’d been expecting it or not when he heard her say she needed to talk with his mother. She’d been coming for almost a week, and so his mom nodded and stepped outside with her. The manager didn’t mind. The diner wasn’t busy, and it would only take a minute. Minseok watched them while they talked outside. It would be so easy for the lady to do something; no one else was watching, no one was pulling into the parking lot or leaving the diner. He watched his mother’s expression change from polite to confused to concerned. Her eyes kept cutting up to him, but they were just far away enough from the window that even though he could hear voices, he couldn’t make out what they were saying. After a few minutes, the lady stayed where she was as his mother walked over to the side door, poking her head inside.

“Seok, come here a moment.”

“Yes, mamma,” he said, dropping his pencil and sliding out of the booth.

He jumped off the top step when he stepped out of the side door, and walked around to where the lady stood just under the window by his booth.

“Hello, Minseok,” the lady smiled. It was a wide, friendly, smile, and it struck Minseok as a sharp contrast to the mechanical way she ate. Her voice was smooth and a little deep; not as deep as the manager’s but a good bit deeper than his mother’s. “My name is Claire.”

“Hello,” Minseok was wary as he shook her hand. Up close he could see that her movements were as smooth as her voice, almost too perfect, but not smooth enough to be inhuman. Just toeing the line of unsettling.

“Minseok, I work for an agency called Clover. We’re… well, to put it simply, we’re looking for people like you.”

“People like me in what way?”

“You notice things. You pay attention to your surroundings and you see things that aren’t right. Unnatural. Just plain weird.”

Like you. Minseok didn’t say it out loud. Instead he nodded, and then asked:

“Why are you looking for me?”

“Clover observes and documents all these weird things. But not everyone who works with us knows how to notice them. In fact, there’s only a handful of people who can, and most of them are getting older and can’t travel.”

“So you’re looking for kids.”

“Yes. You could finish your schooling with us, we have people who are qualified to teach. And you could visit your mother, occasionally. There are other kids in the program, too. A built-in group of friends. You won’t have to do much for a while, just occasionally go on trips with us and, when you’re older, you and the other kids can go out on your own. We’ll teach you how to do everything.”

Minseok could tell right away there was something she wasn’t saying. The premise was too vague, she was smiling too much. Obviously trying to win him over with a friendly face and as little information as she could give him to make it sound as attractive as possible. There was something about her in general that he didn’t like, and that did the idea no favors in his mind. Plus he had no plans to leave his mother unless he could get a scholarship for college. He wasn’t going to go anywhere with this lady if he could help it, much less to some vague agency.

“Sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sorry. “But I can’t.”

“Okay,” she said. She didn’t stop smiling. There wasn’t a single change to her expression or her tone of voice. “Thank you for talking to me.”

Minseok nodded, and quickly turned away, grabbing his mother’s hand and pulling her back inside.

Minseok barely slept a wink the whole night. He didn’t trust the lady- Claire. He didn’t trust her, and there was no way an agency like that was just going to accept his no. His house was on the edge of the only trailer park in town, just a bit isolated from the other houses because of the way the plots were organized. Usually he found it comforting, the neighbors dogs and the sounds of people were farther away, making it easier to fall asleep. But now it made him nervous. It would be so easy to find, so easy to sneak into. Their closest neighbors still wouldn’t even hear them if something happened.

Every sound became a footstep on gravel. He could have sworn he saw shadows outside his window. A creak in the hall. And all Minseok could do was lie in bed, awake and absolutely petrified.

A loud sound outside made Minseok sit bolt upright with a small scream, but it was only Mr. Mackenzie’s car backfiring. He sighed, and swung his legs out of his bed, grabbing his stuffed dog, Buttons. He stepped out into the hall, skittered past the back door and the washing machine, and quietly opened the door to his mother’s bedroom.

She rolled over to face him when the door creaked as it closed.

“Seok? What’s wrong, did you have a nightmare?”

Minseok shook his head, hurrying over to the bed, and she pulled back the covers so he could climb in.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I heard you a minute ago,” she sounded tired. “What happened?”

“Mr. Mackenzie’s car backfired,” he said, hoping to avoid talking about it. He didn’t want her to worry.

“Seok.”

“Mamma.” It came out as a whine.

She was more awake now, and gave him the look.

“The lady from the diner, Claire… she scares me.”

“Have you seen her anywhere else?”

Minseok shook his head.

“If you do, tell an adult if I’m not there,” his mom said, unable to hold back a yawn. “I won’t let her hurt you, Seok.”

She kissed his forehead.

“I know, Mamma.”

She was already asleep.

It took a few more minutes, but his mother’s soft snoring helped more than he thought, and it wasn’t long before Minseok fell asleep too, hugging his mother with Buttons squished between them.

Nothing happened the next day, at least, not as far as the lady was concerned. In gym class, they started a new unit, soccer, and the two captains for the day had a thumb wrestling contest for who got to pick him. He managed to skin his knee during the last game before class ended, although no one, including him, was sure how, and the teacher sent him to the nurse’s office. He didn’t like the nurse’s office; the air conditioning unit made a weird crunching sound that no one else would ever acknowledge, and he got out of there as fast as he could. His urgency was mistaken for “enthusiasm for learning” and the nurse praised him for it with a fond smile before sending him back to class.

At the diner, the lady, Claire, was still there. She didn’t talk to him, though. Didn’t approach him, and barely even looked at him. After about an hour, Minseok’s apprehension had faded, and he was able to get his homework done, slipping into the comfortable routine of the diner.

Thursday passed in a similar way, and by Friday Minseok was calm. Maybe the agency really had accepted his no, and the lady, Claire, was still in town for other reasons. He hadn’t completely convinced himself of this, but by that point her presence in the diner had become a new part of the routine, and he was able to do his homework and ignore her.

There was a new kid in school, in his class, on Monday. Minseok had no idea why there would be a new kid at this point: there were only three weeks of the school year left. Judging by the looks on the other kids faces, they were thinking the same thing. Their teacher was good at masking her emotions.

The new kid looked out of place. Not wrong, not like the lady, Claire, did, but he didn’t look like someone who should be going to their school. He didn’t look like someone who should be living in their town of tired farmers and even tired-er service workers. His pants, khaki’s, looked new, no holes in the knees or frayed hems. His shirt was clean, looked like it had been pressed, even, and looked like it was a lot nicer than any of the brands the kids wore, even the “old family” kids. Even his shoes… they were white, clean. Not clean like he’d never worn them before, but clean like he had almost never had the occasion to wear them outside, or at least not on any roads that weren’t paved and dirt-free. His shoes looked as foreign next to Minseok’s stained, falling apart, shoes as the lady’s, Claire’s, shoes looked next to the high school girl’s dirty white flats in the diner.

The kid had a round, sweet looking, face. His smile was nervous, like he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d gotten himself into. His hair was perfectly combed, like someone who was worried about first impressions. His hands were pressed to his sides, like someone who was desperately trying not to fidget.

“Everyone,” the teacher addressed the class. Her voice was just a bit too cheery. “I’d like to introduce our newest class member, Junmyeon.”

She butchered it horribly. Junmyeon tried not to wince and just barely made it. Minseok made a very obvious wince in sympathy. The teacher looked a bit stressed.

The other kids in the class said “hi Junmyeon” like they’d all been dragged to an alcoholics anonymous meeting. Minseok knew they’d be more visibly friendly later, that’s what always happened. They didn’t get many new students, but enough that there was an obvious pattern.

Junmyeon tried to keep the discomfort out of his smile and just barely failed.

“Alright!” their teacher was back to her overly cheerful tone. She pretended to scan the room, but Minseok knew what she was doing. “It looks like there’s an empty seat next to Minseok!”

She started the class on their math worksheets, and led Junmyeon over to Minseok’s table.

“Alright, Junmyeon, this will be your seat for the rest of the school year. We’re working on math worksheets quietly right now, but Minseok can tell you what we’re doing. He’s very smart.”

She looked at Minseok as she said this. He knew what she was saying was more or less “hey, you’re one of three Asian children in the middle of Podunk Nowhere, how about you be friends?” He wasn’t entirely sure if he should be offended or not, but decided against it. Junmyeon looked very stressed, and he didn’t need to be.

He nodded at the teacher. She looked like she’d given an internal sigh of relief.

Once Junmyeon was set up with a worksheet and had gotten his school supplies out of his bag, all of them clearly new, the teacher left to go walk around and answer questions.

Minseok quietly introduced Junmyeon to their table mates, their “table” made up of four desks pushed together cause actual tables were for kindergartners. The other two kids, Tracy and Isaac, repeated his name softly to themselves as Minseok filled Junmyeon in on what they were doing.

He really didn’t need to: Junmyeon was as good as, or better, at Minseok at math. In fact, Minseok discovered as the day went on, the only things Minseok was outright better at him at were English and soccer. Junmyeon was a math wizard, great at science, had a solid grasp on social studies, a musical ear (the music teacher was already lamenting that she didn’t have him sooner for their tiny fifth grade choir; Ruth, who always got the solos, looked like she wasn’t sure if she should be offended or impressed) and even though Minseok was better at soccer, Junmyeon had definitely become another person to fight over by the end of their gym time; and while he was still learning English, he had a better grasp of grammar and vocabulary, and better handwriting, than at least seventy-five percent of the class.

Minseok knew something was up. Junmyeon’s story was that he was homeschooled, but his parents split and he ended up moving here. If Junmyeon stayed here he would probably end up skipping several grades, there was no need for him to be in school for the last three weeks. He was also just vague enough about his home life and where he’d lived before that Minseok could tell it was at least partially made up. After several days, he hadn’t seen Junmyeon with the lady, Claire, but the sudden enrollment and vague story made him suspect.

It was the end of the first week when Minseok figured it out. It had been several days of just barely making it to his bus on time after watching Junmyeon wait to be picked up and seeing nothing, when Junmyeon’s car was just a bit earlier than usual, when he had his suspicions confirmed.

The lady’s, Claire’s, car. Junmyeon walked toward it immediately, and Minseok was about to hurry and leave to catch his bus when Junmyeon stopped, and whirled around with a surprised look on his face.

“Minseok!” The call was just as much a surprised shout as it was an invitation for him to come over.

Both boys looked a little sheepish as they met in the middle, walking towards each other.

“I’m gonna miss my bus,” Minseok said.

“We can give you a ride to the diner.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with her.” Minseok narrowed his eyes.

“She’s not going to kidnap you, I promise.” Junmyeon’s voice was almost pleading.

“I thought you were with her, I couldn’t tell for sure but I thought so. Your story didn’t make sense.” He couldn’t keep the slightly accusatory note out of his voice.

“To you, it didn’t,” Junmyeon said. “But you and I see and hear more things than other kids.”

“So, what, you were sent here to win me over?”

“That’s why Claire asked for me, yes, but that’s not the whole reason why I came. I didn’t want to be your friend just for some agency recruiting thing, I promise.”

“I don’t know if I believe you yet,” Minseok told him.

Junmyeon sighed, “that’s okay. I didn’t expect you to right away. But please, come with me to the diner. You missed your bus, anyway.”

The lady, Claire, greeted him when he climbed into the back seat behind Junmyeon. Minseok didn’t want to talk to her, but he felt compelled to at least not be rude. Southern social graces are a very hard thing to overcome. The ride to the diner was silent, but when they got there, Junmyeon looked a little excited.

Minseok let him sit at his booth.

Despite Minseok’s reservations, he ended up bringing Junmyeon along with him for everything he did. At school they were table mates, had a playful competition going during gym (they moved on from soccer to a new unit: kickball) and sat together at lunch. After school, they went to the diner together and finished their homework. Minseok still didn’t want to have anything to do with the lady, Claire, so Junmyeon ended up with a bus pass.

There was a low murmur among the school kids that the flowers were blooming. The festival was coming. Minseok tried not to think about it.

Minseok didn’t know what it was about Junmyeon, but after only a week or so he felt closer to him than all of his classmates, the classmates he’d grown up with. Minseok invited Junmyeon to stay with him and his mother, the first time he’d ever invited anyone, when he found out that Junmyeon was staying in a motel room with the lady, Claire.

“I mean, she’s not awful, but…”

“Something feels wrong about her,” Minseok said.

“Yeah.”

Most of the wildflowers were in bloom before the school year ended. The days turned hot and lazy, a gentle breeze swept across the fields, the sides of the road, the area in the back of the elementary school playground where the wildflowers had encroached past the rusting fence, weaving through it like choking vines and into the relative safety of the playground. The breeze rustled the flowers, making them brush together in a noise that sounded like whispers. Just incoherent enough that no one could understand what they were saying. During recess, kids stopped while they were still in the middle of the monkey bars, their hands slowly losing their grip on the hot metal, sniffing the scent being carried by the breeze. Kids on swings just sat there, closing their eyes and inhaling. The basketballs bounced weakly as they rolled off the slab of concrete that made up the court. The teachers just talked about their upcoming vacation time, discussing a possible trip down to Corpus Christi, or maybe Port Aransas.

Junmyeon didn’t understand. Minseok felt dread grow in his stomach as they laid in the shade of an old tree, taking turns reading out loud from one of Minseok’s library books.

The school year ended, and Minseok and Junmyeon found themselves in the library almost daily. The library was small in comparison to most libraries, but for such a small town was a fairly large size. Minseok had read somewhere that a lady from one of the old families, one of the richer families, had a passionate love for books and a fondness for the neighborhood kids. Minseok had long memorized the layout of the shelves and the placement of the books, even though he hadn’t read all of them. Maybe by the time he graduated high school. They had only just finished fifth grade. Plenty of time. Junmyeon could find things with almost as neat an ability after only a few trips, and the two boys passed their days away among the long, high, shelves, light streaming in through the big windows, made dusty by the dirt beginning to cake on the outside. Minseok felt safe in the library, the only place he avoided was the second floor men’s bathroom, which smelled bad no matter how many air fresheners were spread around and where the air conditioner creaked strangely in the wall. At least the section closest to it was the romance section, so he really felt no need to go in that area anyway. They’d spend their days browsing, sometimes reading nearly half the book before deciding if it was something Minseok needed to check out for both of them or if they should leave it. The library was busier in the summer, but Minseok found he could never hear any noise from the children’s section, even if he was in the young adult section right next to it. At least it was pleasant. He wasn’t sure if that was a Weird Thing or if the parents who brought their children there had taught them their inside voices. One could only hope.

And they ended their days at the diner. The manager gave them ice cream “just because you’ve been good boys” now that school was out. The grandfather who came in with the high school girl asked them what they were reading rather than asking about their homework. They always ended up getting there after the homeless man who lived under the bridge by the car lot left, but Minseok knew he still came. Everyone in the diner still came. They came at the same time as they always did and they sat in the same booths they always did. Minseok’s mother, as well as the other waitresses, sat passing travelers in booths that wouldn’t interfere with the unspoken seating arrangement. The routine didn’t change. The only new thing was that now Junmyeon simply went home with Minseok and his mother, but even that was becoming routine.

And then came the day of the festival. Every year, Minseok said to himself that he wasn’t going to go. He’d been telling himself this since he was eight, and yet even when he was on his own he always found himself walking to the festival grounds, which were nothing but a vacant lot behind City Hall every other time of the year.

But this year he had Junmyeon. His mother had the evening shift, she always seemed to have the evening shift on the day of the festival, and Minseok was secretly glad.

“I’ll stay with you for as long as I can,” Minseok’s mother said as they pulled into the City Hall parking lot. Even though the festival had been going for a few hours by now, the parking lot wasn’t full. Minseok was pretty sure there were more parking spots for City Hall than there were cars in the town. “I know you two can get home, or to the diner, on your own.”

Minseok and Junmyeon nodded, unbuckling and sliding out of the car when Minseok’s mother had parked.

Minseok had to admit, he liked the sights, the sounds, and the smells of the festival itself. The weather was getting warmer, but fortunately the temperature was staying in the upper eighties, no clouds, a gentle breeze. Perfect festival weather. It always seemed to be perfect festival weather when the festival came around, he could never remember it being rained out. He and his mother took Junmyeon around the food stalls, the smell of the fryers and the cooking foods wafting out into the walkways. Mr. Jenkins ran one of them and liked to describe his fried foods as “weirder than the Great State Fair of Texas!” or at least, that was what the banner proclaimed. Half the stuff he served Minseok wasn’t sure was edible. Everyone in the town came to the festival, or at least it seemed that way from all the people they weaved past. Cooks calling out orders, a wave of noise from everyone talking, apologies from people bumping into each other, although there was less of that this year, they’d made the aisles wider. Minseok’s mother bought them both corn dogs and even a funnel cake for the three of them to share, and Minseok found an empty picnic table for the three of them to sit at: eating their food and watching the bees buzz lazily around the trash cans as they talked.

There was an undercurrent of excitement during the festival that the town just didn’t have usually. It was something new, even though Minseok had seen mostly the same rides and games and food stalls year after year, it was something out of the normal routine. Bands and singers took the stage that had been set up against the back wall of City Hall, and the music could be heard throughout the whole festival. It was mostly country music, the preferred genre of at least half the town, although a couple of classic rock cover bands took the stage and were received with delighted cheers. An undercurrent, a beat, to everyone’s actions.

Everyone was happy, everyone was excited; the wildflowers had bloomed.

Junmyeon bought himself and Minseok tickets for the rides. Minseok’s mother had started to but Junmeyon had asked to, insisting that the lady, Claire, gave him way too much pocket money. They’d only gone on a couple before Minseok’s mother had to leave, and the two were left to their own devices.

They took a break to go look at all of the livestock. There were multiple contests, mostly for kids to show off their animals. Here the smell of fried food faded away into the smell of fresh dirt, manure, and clean horses. The sound of the live bands were overpowered with the clucking of chickens, the call of someone’s peacock, the clapping and cheering for the kids showing off their roping skills. None of the contests were serious here, there were shows a few towns over for that. Junmyeon hadn’t yet had a chance to see a lot of the livestock up close, so Minseok led him around, making a point to show him the animals belonging to their classmates.

Eventually, though, they made their way back to the rides and food stalls. The music from the machines and the excited shrieks of everyone on them filling the air, the fried food smell retaking the air from the smell of animals. They rode the pirate ship too many times, raced each other through the fun house, and ended up on the Ferris wheel. The sun was getting low in the sky when they approached the top, and even though Minseok tried to keep his eyes on Junmyeon, or the festival, or anything else, he found himself looking towards the flower fields. So many of them, rustling in whispers from the breeze, surrounding the festival, surrounding the town, like a standing army, waiting to be given the order to move in. Minseok felt the feeling of dread in his stomach, which he’d been able to more or less ignore during the day, return in full force. They started down not long after, and when the ride ended, Minseok felt slightly more relieved.

They still had tickets, but not enough for rides, so they ended up getting a bag of candied pecans to share, which used the rest of them up. They walked around at an easy pace; the lower light meant all the lights from the rides were much more visible, and Minseok and Junmyeon both kept getting distracted by them.

Now that it was closer to 7:30, they ran into more people they knew, too. Their teacher, whose pronunciation of Junmyeon’s name wasn’t quite as bad as it had been, but was still missing the mark. Several classmates, and some of the school staff: the librarian and several of the lunch ladies who were all fond of Minseok and liked Junmyeon.

They were talking to Isaac, their old table-mate, when it happened.

“So, have y’all been down to see my rooster yet?”

“Of course!” Minseok nodded. “I spotted him from the end of the row.”

Isaac grinned. “He’s a beautiful boy, isn’t he?” He turned to Junmyeon, “I raised him from when he was a chick. He hatched right in front of me! Think’s I’m his mo-“

Minseok watched, his heart sinking, as Isaac’s eyes unfocused, and his voice trailed off. When he spoke again, his voice was light, what the floating dream feeling would sound like if it had a sound:

“It’s time for the singing.”

“What?” Junmyeon sounded confused.

Minseok squeezed Junmyeon’s wrist in what he hoped was a comforting way as they watched all the children at the festival, children anywhere from four years old to the high school kids, turn, as if in a trance, and begin to walk towards the flower field. None of their parents looked alarmed, or even called after their children to ask where they were going.

“This happens every year,” Minseok said, following the kids with Junmyeon keeping a tight grip on him, the two of them at a much slower pace. “None of the adults ever find it strange. No one ever mentions it after it happens.”

He could feel Junmyeon’s pulse through their linked hands. He wondered if Junmyeon could feel his, too.

“This is why I never want to go to the festival, but every year I always end up back here.”

They reached the flower field in far too short a time. The sunlight was low, it was almost dark, although Minseok could still see just fine. The rustling whispers of the flowers grew even louder, although the breeze didn’t seem to pick up at all, and the scent of them overtook even the stench of the livestock just behind them. Minseok wasn’t sure if the animals had stopped making noise, if the ride operators had turned off the music in their machines, or if he just suddenly couldn’t hear them. There was no sounds other than the flowers rustling, the footstep of the adults coming to watch the children.

The children stood out in the flower field, it didn’t seem like they had trampled any flowers at all, even though the field was far too thick for them to have been able to avoid every one. The high school and junior high kids made up an outer circle, the older elementary students a circle inside that, and the youngest a circle inside that, all facing the center. Minseok watched as they all joined hands, the youngest circle able to link themselves by putting their arms on each other’s shoulders. They began a sort of dance, crossing one foot over the other so that their circles rotated.

And then the children all began to sing. The song only had one verse, one melody, but it was repeated several times in shape note singing after the first verse. Minseok knew for a fact that many of the children were not as good of singers as they sounded at that moment, and he doubted that any of them knew the abbreviated solfege that they were singing.

_Our hearts our minds our limbs our souls root to this sacred ground_

_Tis on this eve we meet, o’re the top our flower mound_

_O come ye children, lift your voices, as the darkn’ss falls_

_O wind yon blossoms round thy head and sing thee to thy rest_

Junmyeon was trembling next to him, the shape note singing sounded like chanting in some different language. Like a ritual. Minseok knew it somewhere in him that this was indeed a ritual, but he didn’t know what for or why. He didn’t want to know why. He prayed desperately that the ritual wouldn’t come to fruition while he was still alive.

After a few verses of the shape note singing, the song stopped. The children dropped each other’s hands or unlinked their arms and began to walk back through the flower field. Minseok couldn’t see paths from any trampled flowers, even though that should be impossible with the thickness of the field and the height of the flowers themselves. Some of the flowers were almost engulfing the youngest children.

The children all made it back to the dirt lot, and suddenly all the sounds and smells of the festival came flooding back. The rush was so strong Minseok almost fell over, hit with the smell of animals, the sounds of the music from the rides, the animals making noise, and everyone talking. No one was talking about what just happened. No one gave any indication that they knew what had just happened. Under all the festival sounds was the rustling of the field, the smell of the animals just slightly undercut with the scent of the flowers.

Minseok turned to Junmyeon. All the color had drained from his face, and he looked at Minseok with wide eyes, silently asking him if that had just happened.

“Let’s go to the diner,” Minseok said quietly.

Junmyeon nodded.

There was never any acknowledgement of what had happened. The festival ended the next day, and the town eased right on into summer. People with money and time left town and went on vacation, but a good portion of the town lacked one or both.

As was becoming the usual, Minseok and Junmyeon ended up spending their days at the library, from the time it opened, and at least until late afternoon. They’d moved from spending their time primarily in the shelves of books to the shelves of the newspaper archives. Junmyeon knew more about researching things, and he liked looking at the old newspapers, piecing together the chain of events that had happened for a particular event, or just seeing how the town had changed weekly. The reference librarian, Mrs. Henderson, loved it. Minseok knew a little bit of the town history but for as far back as they started, they came to her a lot. They followed official things like the building of City Hall, or the transfer of the town library into the new building, and the conversion of the old one into an extension of the police station, but also unofficial things like how many times the land that belonged to Mr. Jenkins had been sold, or even people’s general life history, which was possible since most of the early newspapers seemed to act more like church bulletins, with prayer requests made public.

They had been doing this for a while, half the town’s history written down in Junmyeon’s barely used school notebooks, when they found it.

It couldn’t be a real newspaper. Especially given the content of the rest of the newspapers in 1927, when the article was dated, which were all family friendly, any mention of crime sort of passive and never making the front page. There was no title on the article, no newspaper title and no article title.

It would have never been published. The photo was large, of a middle-aged man, laying in the dirt just off the highway. He had to be dead. His back was bent at an angle that was impossible for anyone but a contortionist, circling around so that the top of his head rested on the ground between his thighs. His limbs were all at unnatural angles, some twisted almost completely around. There were words, symbols that had been scratched into his skin, that they could see only too clearly but didn’t understand what they were. The man’s eyes were rolled back in his head, his mouth open in a contorted, silent, scream of pain. The article described, in far too much detail, what had “probably” happened to the man, in a way that told them that that was exactly what had happened.

They had never left the library faster. Junmyeon ended up throwing up in the bushes outside. Minseok couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking. They both looked at each other. Had they seen that? Had they both just seen that?

Junmyeon was able to talk first.

“We need to talk to Claire.”

Mercifully, the lady, Claire, was in her motel room, rather than a public place. Junmyeon knew she’d be, but it still surprised Minseok somehow.

“What did you see?” the lady, Claire, asked as soon as she saw their faces.

Junmyeon explained; he had to take a moment here and there but Minseok didn’t think words would come out of his own mouth if he tried to help.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” the lady, Claire, said when he finished. Her voice was soft but not quite comforting. It had a tone like she was meaning for it to be comforting, but just missing the mark.

“Is it…?” Junmyeon trailed off.

She nodded, then turned to Minseok.

“Minseok. This is one of the things that Clover does. The photograph you saw was of one victim in a string of murders, made by something that’s not exactly supernatural, but not completely natural either. We’re small enough, and we don’t publish anything externally, so we don’t worry about terminology too much.”

That was an attempt at a joke but Minseok didn’t laugh.

“Clover documents things like these. We figure out what is behind these things, and we put a stop to them.”

“How?”

“The methods vary. Some of these… how about I call them creatures? Some of these creatures have sided with us. They know a lot more than we do, and they help. That’s what we’d be teaching you to do: to document, piece together, and eventually stop these things from happening. You will still see weird things, it’ll be your job, after all, but you won’t be helpless like you are now.”

“The culprit of… what we saw… have you found it?”

The lady, Claire, shook her head. “We’re working on it.”

Minseok was suddenly terrified for his mother, his friends, the town in general.

“If I go with you, if I join Clover, we can stop it?”

The lady, Claire, smiled. She was showing too many teeth.

“Yes, of course.”

Junmyeon squeezed his hand, he still looked a bit pale, but now he looked hopeful.

“Okay,” Minseok breathed. Then, stronger, “okay, I’ll do it.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of this while listening to Alice Isn't Dead way too many times ^^; 
> 
> The song the children sing in the wildflower field (along with the shape note singing) is to the tune of the Pottsfield Song, from Over the Garden Wall. Shape note singing is like solfege singing, (do, re, mi, fa, so, etc.) but it's more of an abbreviated scale, mainly found in the south. 
> 
> Also, in case it's not clear, Minseok is eleven at this point, Junmyeon is ten going on eleven.


	2. Chapter 2

Minseok hadn’t seen his mother cry, but he knew she did. She just didn’t let him see, even when he was crying in her arms. He didn’t want to leave his mother, he hadn’t planned to leave his mother for a long while, but fear of what might happen to the both of them if he didn’t go, if he didn’t try to track whatever it was that had killed that man, settled in his gut.

Junmyeon wasn’t overt about it but it was very clear that he was delighted that Minseok would be coming back with him.

The lady, Claire, had just smiled her smile that showed too many teeth and had been entirely inappropriate considering what horror Junmyeon had just described to her. Minseok had avoided her in the following several days.

His mother had had a long talk with the lady, Claire, while she shooed Minseok and Junmyeon out of the house. They wandered around, and Minseok pointed out different places that they hadn’t had an occasion to go to yet. They ran into people they knew and told them the vaguest information possible: the two of them were leaving and wouldn’t be back. Fancy scholarship, private school. Minseok knew that by the next day everyone in town would know.

They ended up on the edge of Grandpa Daniels’ property: the man had no grandchildren but was a beloved figure on par with Santa in the eyes of the vast majority of the children in town, so had earned the nickname. They leaned against the fence, watching the cows and petting the noses of the two bold ones who came close, wanting treats. There was a tree several yards away from the property line, and Junmyeon noticed what Minseok always had: no cows went near the tree. It was a hot day, the sun bearing down on them, and yet the cows who couldn’t find space under the other trees on the property still did not go near that particular tree, didn’t even rest in its shadow. Minseok guessed by the way that Junmyeon tried not to look at the tree for very long that he also saw the figure underneath one of the branches.

Not quite a week after Minseok and Junmyeon had seen the gruesome article, Minseok was clinging to his mother and trying not to cry while Junmyeon and the lady, Claire, waited for him in the car.

“You’ll be able to visit for birthdays,” his mother may not be crying but she sounded like she was on the verge.

Minseok just buried his face in her shoulder.

“You’re going to learn so much,” she said. She was holding him almost tight enough to hurt, like she could keep him there or go with him if she just clung hard enough.

“I love you, Mamma.”

All too soon it was time to go. Outside, the morning was that pleasant sort of cool that promised either rain or a blisteringly hot afternoon. The humidity settled on his skin like a layer of dust and grime he couldn’t shake off, seeping in through his clothes. His mother settled his things alongside Junmyeon’s in the trunk. It was strange to look at, knowing what all was inside it. All the essentials of his life fit into his backpack and a $5 thrift store duffle bag that looked like it had been someone’s dance bag in its previous life. All his clothes, including his father’s old sweatshirt that looked like a loose dress on him, his toothbrush and hairbrush, Buttons, and even his school things and the handful of books he actually owned. All in two frighteningly small bags sitting in the trunk of the lady’s, Claire’s, car, crammed between Junmyeon’s and the side of the trunk. He liked to think it was a testament to his mother’s packing skills.

And then she was settling him into the back seat of the car, and he didn’t shake her off, even though he was plenty able to buckle his own seat belt, because he didn’t want her to leave. She reached over and ruffled Junmyeon’s hair and patted his cheek, and hugged Minseok tightly again. Her eyes were glistening as she pulled away.

“You’d better get going or the traffic will be bad,” she said, and tried to sound normal but her voice was watery. “I-10 gets slow just before lunch time.”

Minseok never saw her tears fall. He knew they did, but he couldn’t see them, and by the time they were about to pull around the corner of the street, Minseok couldn’t see her face at all.

For once, Minseok wasn’t terribly observant as they drove out of town. Leaving town, seeing something beyond the same flat cow pastures and stores and diners that had been there since before he was born, seeing more than what he and his mom saw when they went on their occasional Sunday drives (which was usually only to the next, slightly larger, dusty town with a run-down movie theater and a Walmart) had been something that he wanted, that he’d dreamed about. But it was a distant dream, one he had thought would wait until he was old enough for college. That had been the plan, he’d be content with the same booth at the diner, the same books in the library, and the same people he’d always seen, until he graduated high school and, hopefully with a scholarship or two, then he’d head to a larger city.

He had never planned to leave at eleven. That was much too early.

It didn’t rain. The humidity turned oppressive as the sun got higher in the sky, and the lady, Claire, turned the air conditioner colder and colder and turned the blast on higher and higher.

“Are you two getting enough air back there?”

Junmyeon always answered politely. Minseok barely nodded.

It was a five hour drive. Most of that was getting out of Texas. Most of any road trip out of state was getting out of Texas. Junmyeon tried to get Minseok to smile, offering him a turn on his Gameboy Advance (they’d been taking turns on the Mario levels ever since Junmyeon had gotten the system when it first came out a few weeks ago) or trying to point out interesting things on the road, but Minseok didn’t feel like playing and while he was staring out the window, he wasn’t exactly paying attention.

The lady, Claire, turned off the interstate onto a smaller highway, and they stopped in Pecos right around lunch time. About two hours in, three to go. They stopped in a diner, something that looked like the building was a bit more permanent than the converted trailer Minseok’s mother worked in, and that was when Minseok started to feel a bit less upset. It wasn’t that he was suddenly happy, or even excited, but he couldn’t help but be a bit, well, not shaken but shaken was the only word that described the feeling remotely accurately, when they stepped inside.

It was so like everything he’d known, everything looked so similar, but at the same time everything was completely different. The booths were the same color, they may have even been the same booths, but they were nicer; the plastic wasn’t cracking to show the stuffing inside the cushions. Tile, counter, the window behind the counter where the kitchen staff placed the finished baskets. The dessert case had slightly fancier things inside it; the frosting job on the yellow cake was neater, and there was even a chocolate mousse cake, although they still had the standard “fancy” glasses of pudding with too much whipped cream, or cubed jello. But while there were still some truckers and a family with two tired parents and four kids all wanting to sit in the corner of the big round booth, Minseok didn’t know the routine of this diner. He didn’t know what time the homeless man came in for a plate of eggs and some water, if he even came in at all. He was sure there would be an elderly couple who’d been coming to the diner as regulars since it opened, but he didn’t know when they’d be there or what they’d look like. No high school girl with dirty flats and a kind old grandpa. He didn’t know the routine, he didn’t know the people. After so long in the same booth at his town diner, he suddenly felt foreign in this one, and it was somewhere between an uncomfortable feeling and an exciting one.

They got back on the road about thirty minutes later, but stopped at the state line. It wasn’t anything terribly exciting, they were traveling on a paved highway with one lane going in either direction, and all there was at the border was a dirt road turn off and a little green sign that read “New Mexico State Line” held up by little metal poles. Junmyeon was a little too excited about it, and wanted to get out and see the sign, which they did, but the heat factor brought them back in fairly quickly. Two hours to go.

Minseok let Junmyeon coax him into smiling. He looked at the things Junmyeon pointed out on the side of the road, and accepted the offer of a turn at Mario. It wasn’t Junmyeon’s fault. Yes, Minseok was upset, he didn’t want to leave, but at the same time he couldn’t make Junmyeon miserable. As Minseok smiled more and looked interested in the things Junmyeon was showing him, Junmyeon perked back up and his cheerfulness was genuine again, rather than forced.

“We’re getting close,” Junmyeon said, maybe about three and a half or four hours in.

They were headed into the mountains, and Minseok didn’t try to hide that he was a little in awe. Texas was so flat, especially where he was. Technically the last part of a mountain chain ran through the very far West part of Texas, but Minseok hadn’t been out that far. He’d never seen mountains before.

It was much greener, even though it was summer. The leaves on the trees were an actual healthy green, not the half-dead brown green that mostly everything was back home. The trees were tall, and Minseok thought they were pines, but there were several kinds and he’d never paid attention to types of trees; there were nothing but live oaks back home.

They weren’t too far up the mountain when the lady, Claire, turned off the paved road onto a dirt road. The trees were thicker there, and so the light that made it to the dirt road was more filtered than on the paved road. It was pretty, but it made Minseok nervous. At some point, he didn’t know how far up they were but they’d been gently bouncing along for at least a few minutes, he thought he saw a run-down log cabin, more shack than anything habitable. Just looking at it creeped him out, and he turned away.

Higher, and higher, the dirt road wound around and around. The lady, Claire, drove slow enough that Minseok didn’t feel like they were going to go flying off a sharp bend, but too fast for him to really make out any of the other wooden structures he saw not too far off the road. At one point he thought he saw a small barn, red doors and all, but he couldn’t be sure.

And then, with very little warning, they reached a clearing. They weren’t at the top of the mountain, Minseok could see the bases of smaller roads or walking paths that went higher, but from how long they’d been driving, Minseok knew they were fairly high up.

The road changed back to being paved, and although there was grass at the edge of the clearing, it quickly made way for sidewalks and concrete. There were several buildings, a mash of styles; some were brick, some looked like concrete or steel, older architecture styles that Minseok was more familiar with next to sleek modern lines. It clashed sharply with the nature surrounding it, which only served to make it look more alien. It didn’t belong here.

They drove into the complex, past a few sleek, but short, buildings, and came to a stop in front of a small brick building. It looked like one of dorm buildings at a college that Minseok had seen a picture of, but not as big. Two stories, but with windows that were fairly closely spaced, and a small staircase up to it.

“This is where we live,” Junmyeon explained as he put his Gameboy back in his backpack. “There are a bunch of rooms that we don’t need to use yet, but it’s nice. There’s a big living room and we have our own kitchen. Although usually someone comes over and cooks for us.”

Minseok looked back at the building. So, this was, for lack of a better word, home now.

It didn’t feel creepy but at the same time Minseok couldn’t say he liked it.

The three of them climbed out of the car, and Minseok inhaled deeply. The air was clearer here, colder, definitely, but something about it was crisp and clean and decidedly different from home. It was cooler, too, although Minseok had expected that when he realized they were going up in the mountains.

Minseok saw, out of the corner of his eye, the door to the building open just before he heard a little voice shout

“Junmyeon!”

He turned, and saw a little boy who couldn’t have been older than nine, with thick glasses, practically fly down the steps and run straight into Junmyeon’s arms, who had bent down a bit to catch him.

“Soo,” Junmyeon smiled into the boy’s hair as he hugged him tightly.

The two of them stayed like that for a moment, and Minseok busied himself with taking his luggage out of the trunk so he wouldn’t stare.

“Were you okay?” He heard Junmyeon ask softly.

No verbal reply at first, the boy could have been shaking or nodding his head, before he heard a soft little

“Lonely. Mr. Sanchez came over and cooked the whole time.”

“He’s okay, though.”

No verbal reply.

Minseok stopped pretended to adjust the strap on his backpack when he saw Junmyeon turn around out of the corner of his eye, and looked up. The boy was still clinging to Junmyeon, his face buried in his chest now that Junmyeon was standing up straight.

“Minseok, this is Kyungsoo,” Junmyeon smiled like an older brother. “He’s eight.”

“Kyungsoo,” Junmyeon said, and Kyungsoo lifted his head from Junmyeon’s chest. “This is Minseok.”

Kyungsoo looked over at Minseok, his face neutral, like he wasn’t sure how to react.

“Hello, Kyungsoo,” Minseok smiled.

Kyungsoo gave him a shy, but cute, little smile. His slight eye-smile was the cutest thing. “Hi, Minseok.”

As they got Minseok settled, not that there was much to get unpacked, Kyungsoo slowly released his orbit around Junmyeon as he calmed down. Minseok couldn’t blame him; Junmyeon had been in Texas for two months. Two months in this place, as the only eight year old… Minseok would be clinging, too.

Kyungsoo was polite, and quiet, towards Minseok, but when he talked with Junmyeon, he could see Kyungsoo’s real personality. Kyungsoo helped Minseok put his things away in their bedroom, which had a set of bunk beds and a twin bed, which Junmyeon said was Minseok’s, along with a dresser and small closet. Junmyeon tried to help, but Kyungsoo swatted his hands away.

“Don’t let him organize anything,” Kyungsoo told Minseok. “He’s messy.”

“I’m not that messy!” Junmyeon said, but his smile was too big for him to look mad.

Kyungsoo threw him the most unimpressed look Minseok had ever seen and Minseok couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

That first day was a bit awkward, with Minseok trying to adjust both to the building and Junmyeon’s and Kyungsoo’s routine, and Kyungsoo and Junmyeon getting used to a third person. Junmyeon said that the three of them had been given time off from classes to adjust, but that the day after tomorrow they were supposed to get back to it.

The building was far too big. It really was more like a dormitory hall than a house: sure, there was a kitchen, which looked relatively normal, no industrial appliances or anything, but the dining room table had space for at least fourteen people, so when the three of them ate dinner, they ate at one end, with the rest of the table completely empty and their conversation far too quiet for the size of the room. The living room was probably the most normal: back home some of the kids who had bigger houses had playrooms, and the living room seemed to function more like that. There were large shelves full of books, a couple of bean bag chairs, a couch in front of a TV and VCR, and a cabinet of videos, a short cabinet full of board games, and in one corner, a computer. The room looked relatively lived in, like their bedroom, which calmed Minseok a bit.

The upstairs, though, was definitely creepy. The three of them were only in one room, and there were at least ten bedrooms upstairs, all on one hall, so it was long, with closed doors all the way down either side of the staircase, which came up the middle. One bathroom for all of the rooms, so it was too large, with multiple showers, four sinks, three toilet stalls, and a separate bathtub; the size of the room made any sounds echo far too much, especially if only one person was in the bathroom at a time. The hall was what creeped Minseok out the most: there were thin, tall, windows at each end, with lace curtains, which Minseok supposed was the Clover administrator’s idea of trying to make it homey, but ended up making it look like a hotel in a horror movie. There were several lights along the hall, but they were a bit too far apart, making the hallway seem dark even with them on. Junmyeon said that he had been there for three years, and Kyungsoo for one, but the carpet still smelled new. At night, when Minseok came up the staircase, he found himself not wanting to look down towards either end of the hall.

Minseok did settle in, though. It took about a week to really learn the grounds, primarily because the three of them stuck to about three places: their dorm, their classroom building, and the recreation area. The classroom building was, like the dorm, too big, but they were able to keep to the lower level and the upper was closed off. The recreation area that they stayed in was for the three of them only: there was a basketball court, and a soccer field, with an equipment building between the two. The other buildings on the grounds were for the adults: a building with all of their offices, a building for their apartments (it was weird to think that the lady, Claire, lived in an apartment; she seemed like she should just pop in and out of existence at the beginning and end of each day) a research center, and their own recreation area.

The classes… on the first day, Minseok could see why Junmyeon was so far ahead of his public school grade level. The only ones taking the classes were the three of them, and since they were at different levels, the attention he got from the teachers was like nothing he’d ever had. They didn’t give off the same weird vibe that the lady, Claire, did either; they were normal human beings. Mr. Sanchez taught math, and he was the one who usually came over and cooked for them. He was unendingly patient and smiled a lot, making sure that they knew they were doing well. He taught them different things about cooking, too, when he came to their dorm room, and more often than not, Kyungsoo ended up helping him make food. He played games with them, too, sometimes acting as a sort of coach for their soccer “games.” And he was the one to take them out hiking. Miss Schuyler taught both English, which was the only subject Minseok was ahead of Junmyeon on, since it was his first language and Junmyeon’s second, and social studies. She wasn’t too much older than them, about twenty, and apparently she’d grown up in the program.

“Can you see…” Minseok had asked, but she shook her head:

“My grandmother can, though. She’ll probably go on missions with you when you’re a little older.”

And Mrs. Schnider taught their science classes. She loved having them do experiments, and if Minseok asked her a question that could be answered with one, she’d help him figure it out that way. She was endlessly enthusiastic, and always laughed, even when Minseok had almost set the wall on fire.

Aside from having to leave his mother, it was one of the most fun summer’s he’d ever had. Mr. Sanchez took them on the trails leading up the mountain (they never went down the mountain, where all the structures Minseok had seen were) and Mrs. Schnider went with them, if her knee wasn’t bothering her. Compared to his hometown, it was wonderfully cool outside, and Minseok had never been able to go hiking before. Mr. Sanchez took them on all-day hikes where they took lunches and had to leave early in the morning, showed them small campsites closer to the Clover campus, and even showed them different caves: one had a pool of water at the entrance that went up to Minseok’s chest, and Mr. Sanchez had to piggy back Kyungsoo through it, since the water would have been up to his head.

“Should we be doing this?” Kyungsoo fretted. “What if there are animals?”

“The water keeps the animals out of the cave,” Mr. Sanchez explained. “And there aren’t any animals that live in the water; I’ve checked it a lot.”

He was still able to call his mother occasionally, since the dorm had a phone, and the more he talked about playing with Junmyeon, and how much she’d like Kyungsoo, and how nice the teachers were and how much he was learning, the more relieved she sounded.

“I miss you,” she told him. “But I know this is good for you. I’ve never heard you be so excited.”

Summer slowly turned into fall: the leaves on the trees turned into a reds and yellows, the weather cooled enough that Minseok bought himself sweaters and a few long sleeved shirts with the allowance money he was given (which he barely touched: he was given more allowance money a month than what his mom spent on groceries) and the days got shorter and shorter, with darkness falling in the surrounding woods much more quickly than it had, causing the hiking trips to end sometimes rather abruptly.

It was late-October when Mr. Sanchez came to their dorm with the news:

“Junmyeon, Claire needs your help again.”

Kyungsoo looked up sharply, gripping onto Junmyeon’s shirt sleeve.

“Oh,” Junmyeon gave a nervous smile. “Um, when does she need me?”

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning, okay?”

“Okay,” Junmyeon nodded.

For the rest of the night, Kyungsoo was obviously distressed. The look on his face was somewhere between upset and fearful, and his hands moved constantly, gripping his hair or fidgeting over what Junmyeon was packing or just twitching at his sides. Junmyeon had to calm him down several times, putting Kyungsoo’s hand on his own stomach and reminding him how to breathe.

It was no surprise to either Minseok or Junmyeon when Kyungsoo crawled up to Junmyeon’s bunk and clung to him as they both fell asleep.

Minseok and Kyungsoo stood on the porch of the dorm building to see Junmyeon off. Kyungsoo didn’t cry, but he was trembling, and Minseok hugged him tightly.

Kyungsoo was clingy and anxious the entire day. They were given a few days break from classes, Kyungsoo said that they’d done that when Junmyeon had left to go help the lady, Claire, convince Minseok, and so they were free to do whatever they wanted. Minseok wasn’t sure that time to dwell was what Kyungsoo needed, but at the same time he knew that having to concentrate on their lessons wouldn’t help either.

Minseok didn’t mind the clinging; he made lunch for the two of them and Kyungsoo washed the dishes after, with Minseok drying them. They watched a movie afterword and Kyungsoo sat next to him, not touching, but enough that they could feel each other’s body heat. It wasn’t so much that Kyungsoo was constantly touching him, Kyungsoo wasn’t a very touchy person, but that he kept a tight orbit around Minseok, no more than an arm’s distance away at any given point. Dinner, which was heating up leftovers from what Mr. Sanchez had already made, with evening cartoons in the living room.

That got Kyungsoo to perk up a little bit: “we never eat dinner in the living room.”

“Just this once, how about that?” Minseok smiled, and Kyungsoo nodded, looking eager for the first time since Mr. Sanchez had first made the announcement.

It was too quiet when they got ready for bed. Of the three of them, Junmyeon was the chatty one, and usually he would talk, even while he was brushing his teeth and they couldn’t understand him, and fill the too-large bathroom with at least enough noise so that the silent spaces weren’t oppressive. With him gone, though, there was only the small sounds of toothbrush bristles scraping against their teeth, small spits, and water coming out of either the sink or shower. Usually the showers echoed far too loudly but now it seemed almost like the sound was muted. The silent spaces were getting bigger and bigger by the second until they were suffocating. By the time they were done showering the silence was big enough to almost be a physical presence and the two of them exchanged a look and hurried out of the bathroom; Minseok with a towel around his waist and Kyungsoo wearing nothing but his glasses, and hurried straight into their bedroom across the hall.

When it came time to turn off the lights in the dorm, Kyungsoo really did cling to Minseok as the two of them tip toed around the downstairs, turning off all the lights before hurrying up the stairs. Minseok made sure Kyungsoo was in their room before he flipped off the upstairs hall light and sprinted to their room, closing the door behind him quickly.

“Can I sleep in your bed?” Kyungsoo asked worriedly.

“Of course,” Minseok smiled.

Minseok turned off the overhead light, pulled back the covers, and crawled into bed with Kyungsoo, turning briefly to turn off the light on his night stand and set Kyungsoo’s glasses down next to it.

He fell asleep hugging Kyungsoo with Buttons squished between them.

The dorm got less creepy when Mr. Sanchez came back, and the two of them started lessons again. It was easier to move past missing Junmyeon when Minseok had lessons to concentrate on, and it seemed like Kyungsoo felt the same way. The silent spaces in the dorm were filled again, during the evening, with Mr. Sanchez’s voice instead, and returned to their normal size, so it wasn’t so scary at night, especially since he turned the lights off for them.

They adjusted their routine. Mr. Sanchez gave them both disposable cameras, telling them that when they were full he’d go and get the film developed for them, but they were for documenting the fun things they did so that when Junmyeon, and hopefully a new kid, came back, telling stories about what all they’d done would be easier.

And they really got into it. They alternated whose camera they used, and tried to only take one or maybe two pictures when they did something. Kyungsoo teaching Minseok how to bake, the movies they watched during Halloween, the hikes they went on with Mr. Sanchez, Kyungsoo somehow scoring a soccer goal against Minseok… it helped, knowing that there would be something to make sure that they remembered everything they wanted to tell Junmyeon.

Minseok got to know Kyungsoo a lot better, too. Until now, Junmyeon had been a bridge between them: they didn’t get as close because they were both attached to Junmyeon. But now, without Junmyeon there to redirect Kyungsoo away from anxiety attacks, or to keep Minseok from getting stressed, they learned what to do themselves. And it was okay, it was good.

Christmas was a little depressing. Mr. Sanchez had helped them put up a small tree in the living room and decorate it, and strings of Christmas lights in the upstairs hallway helped take away some of the dark spaces, they had gifts for each other, gifts for Junmyeon… which Junmyeon wasn’t there to open. They made Christmas dinner together with Mr. Sanchez, played in the snow, Minseok called his mother and Kyungsoo called his aunt and uncle… but the excitement was dampened. They were happy, yes, and of course they enjoyed it, but they were both desperately hoping that Junmyeon would have been back to share it with them by now.

But, the day after Christmas, Minseok and Kyungsoo woke up to Mr. Sanchez gently shaking them both:

“Get dressed, you two.” He was smiling. “Claire called me from a payphone a while ago. They should be here in about twenty minutes.”

Minseok never got out of bed faster, helping Kyungsoo find his glasses when he’d knocked them off his night stand in his haste to put them on. They threw their clothes on, jammed their slippers on their feet (matching: their Christmas gift from Mr. Sanchez) and brushed their teeth in record time, and then nearly fell down the stairs as they ran down them, waiting at the window like two excited puppies.

It had been over a month and they _missed Junmyeon._

Kyungsoo grabbed Minseok’s arm, the biggest smile on his face, when the lady, Claire, pulled up to the dorm in her shiny gray car. Minseok could feel Kyungsoo nearly trembling as the car rolled to a stop, and Minseok was sure Kyungsoo could feel his heart pounding. They waited until Junmyeon had gotten out of the car before bolting to the door and out of it.

“Junmyeon!” Kyungsoo yelled out.

Minseok had to hold on to Kyungsoo as they ran down the steps to make sure the younger kid didn’t slip and fall.

“Soo! Minseok!” Junmyeon was smiling from ear to ear.

They both hugged him at the same time, Minseok wrapping his arms around Junmyeon’s shoulders and Kyungsoo wrapping around his waist.

After a few moments, Junmyeon pulled back.

“What are you two doing outside with no jackets… and slippers on?!” Junmyeon squawked at them. “Get inside, you’ll get sick!”

Minseok and Kyungsoo hurried back inside; now that they weren’t completely absorbed in getting out there to see Junmyeon they realized how cold it actually was.

Junmyeon and their new kid got their stuff out of the trunk, and hauled it inside. The new kid was tiny, looked to be about Kyungsoo’s age, and Minseok could see him clinging to Junmyeon as the two of them came inside.

Minseok got the door closed once the two of them were in, and helped them take off their jackets. The new kid looked a little scared, and Minseok smiled at him.

“Hi, I’m Minseok!”

The kid gave him an adorable, shy, little smile. “I’m Sehun.”

Sehun was shy, but he was a sweetheart. He was seven years old, and Minseok had to fight not to let his eyes get too wide when Junmyeon told him. Seven years old and recruited by Clover.

Sehun fit into their lives very easily. After a few weeks, when they had been trying to have two sets of bunk beds in their room and found it was too crowded, the four of them decided to start actually using other rooms, and Minseok knew that Kyungsoo liked Sehun a lot when he decided to move with Minseok into the room across the hall, and let Sehun stay with Junmyeon. By the time Kyungsoo turned nine, Sehun was eagerly helping Minseok bake the cake in secret, and was awake even earlier than Minseok was to surprise Kyungsoo the morning of his birthday.

As young as he was, Minseok had been afraid that Sehun would be scared to be away from his parents at Clover, but he seemed to be adjusting to it just fine. Even when the wind blowing past the dorm windows sounded a little too much like howling for comfort, and snow caked onto parts of the windows and began to look like faces with hollow eyes, Sehun took it all in stride, curling up on the couch between Minseok and Junmyeon with a mug of hot chocolate.

January turned into February, February into March, and before Minseok knew it, his twelfth birthday was coming up. His first birthday outside of his hometown. It would be on a Tuesday, but Mr. Sanchez promised Minseok that he could visit his mother that weekend.

On Monday, Minseok could tell Kyungsoo and Sehun were making something. Junmyeon resolutely kept him out of the kitchen, getting up to get him even a glass of water. But he just raised his eyebrow at Junmyeon, who laughed, and didn’t say anything. Minseok knew Kyungsoo and Sehun wanted to surprise him and he wasn’t going to ruin it for them.

On Tuesday, Minseok woke up to singing. Not whispers on the wind, for once, but he could hear voices outside the bedroom door. He calmed down when he realized it was Sehun, Kyungsoo, and Junmyeon, and sat up, blinking, as Sehun gently pushed open the door.

Kyungsoo came in, with Junmyeon hovering behind him, hands ready just in case, carrying the cake he and Sehun had made. It looked wonderful; iced with chocolate buttercream, smooth on the sides and with neat little rosettes on the top, and rainbow confetti sprinkles. Twelve candles in a perfect circle.

When they finished the song, Minseok blew the candles out before the wax could drip very much.

“It looks awesome!” Minseok told them, and Kyungsoo’s and Sehun’s smiles lit up the room.

Junmyeon got him to open up his birthday presents: the three of them had pooled allowance money and had gotten him a Gameboy Advance, as well as a couple of older games. He hugged and thanked them until Kyungsoo squirmed to get away.

Minseok was so excited to go see his mother that the week passed quickly, and before he knew it, it was Friday and he was packing some clothes, the pictures he and Kyungsoo had taken, his new Gameboy, and, of course, Buttons, into his old backpack. Kyungsoo wasn’t stressed: he knew it was just for the weekend, and Minseok could not stop smiling.

“Do you have room for one more thing?” Junmyeon asked as he walked in Minseok’s and Kyungsoo’s bedroom.

“Plenty, I’m not taking much.” Mr. Sanchez was taking him, and they were leaving very early in the morning so they’d get in around breakfast, and Mr. Sanchez was going to San Antonio for the weekend, and they were coming back on Monday, so he only really needed clothes for one day.

“Will you give this to your mom?” Junmyeon asked, and held out a picture frame to Minseok.

The frame was made with pine, and even still had some of the bark on it. Inside was a picture Mr. Sanchez had taken of the four of them after they’d been playing soccer all Saturday afternoon. They were sweaty and their faces were flushed but they were all smiling and laughing.

“Mr. Sanchez helped me make the frame,” Junmyeon said. “I- I don’t know if…”

“Mom will love it,” Minseok said with a smile.

Minseok went to bed early, and woke up around 3 o’clock to Mr. Sanchez shaking him gently.

“It’s time to leave, Minseok,” he whispered.

Mr. Sanchez left the room while Minseok dressed quietly and grabbed his bag. He brushed his teeth and hair in the bathroom, and then followed Mr. Sanchez out of the dorm where his car was waiting outside.

Minseok stared out the window as they drove along the dirt road down the mountain. There were no lights around other than the car’s headlights, but the moon was full and it cast enough of a glow that he could make out the shapes of all the shacks in the trees.

“Minseok?” Mr. Sanchez started.

Minseok turned to face him.

“Don’t look at the shacks too closely, okay?”

“Okay.” Minseok nodded.

He didn’t ask. If Mr. Sanchez was telling him not to, he had a good reason.

Minseok fell asleep before they were even down the mountain, and when he woke up, they were on the highway in Texas. They stopped at a gas station in Pecos, near the diner that the lady, Claire, had taken him and Junmyeon when they’d left Texas. Only a few hours left.

Minseok was awake when they drove into town. The diner was right off the exit, along with a gas station, and Minseok was surprised by how small everything looked. It hadn’t even been a full year, but already the diner looked tiny in the middle of the gravel parking lot it sat on, and the gas station looked like a piece of trash floating in a dirt ocean. Too much space between the buildings. A few cars in the lots, but not nearly enough to make it look like the lots were anywhere close to a reasonable size.

He gave Mr. Sanchez directions as they drove, and before long they were turning into the trailer park. They drove past the chain-link fences with black and red “BAD DOG” signs and rusty car ports and cheap lawn chairs with too many crushed beer cans on porches all the way to the lonely little lot on the back.

“Right here,” Minseok couldn’t stop smiling.

He jumped out of the car as soon as it came to a stop, and as soon as he opened the door, his mother came running out down the steps.

“Mamma!” he called out just before they met each other in a hug.

He had missed this. Just standing here, in his own yard, with his mother’s arms wrapped around him tightly. He didn’t realize how much he missed it until now and he couldn’t stop the tears from coming to his eyes, and this time he did feel his mother’s tears on the top of his head.

It was several minutes before Minseok’s mother rubbed his back and straightened, wiping her eyes.

“Hello Mrs. Kim,” Mr. Sanchez finally spoke. “My name is Antonio Sanchez…”

“Oh!” Minseok could hear the smile in her voice. “You’re Minseok’s math teacher.”

“Yes, I am.”

“He talks about you a lot on the phone. Thank you for taking such good care of the boys.”

“They’re good boys,” Mr. Sanchez smiled.

Mr. Sanchez made sure they both knew when he’d be coming back for Minseok, not until 11 o’clock on Monday, handed Minseok’s bag to him, and left.

Minseok slipped his shoes off as soon as they got in the house.

“You got new shoes!” His mother was smiling. They were completely new shoes, which Minseok had only had a couple times in his life.

“My old ones fell apart during soccer,” Minseok grinned. “These are so clean, it feels weird.”

They sat down next to each other on the couch, and Minseok told her everything. He’d told her some of it over the phone, but here, away from everything, he felt safe, like he really could talk. He showed her all the pictures that he and Kyungsoo had taken, and told her about Sehun and the cake that he and Kyungsoo had made for Minseok’s birthday. He went into detail about the hiking trips and the lessons… it was lunch time before he ran out of things to talk about, and it was definitely the longest he’d ever talked in his life.

“I’m so proud of you!” Minseok’s mother said, hugging him to her.

Minseok could only smile and cling to her.

“Oh,” Minseok started once they pulled away, reaching into his bag again. “Junmyeon made this… well, Mr. Sanchez helped him, but he made this for you.”

He pulled out the picture frame and gave it to her. She loved it, of course.

“It’s a good picture of all four of you,” she smiled. “I’m going to hang it up right here.” She tapped on the main living room wall. “So that everyone can see it.”

They didn’t do much during the afternoon, just ate lunch and walked around the neighborhood. They got stopped to talk a lot, since Minseok was back, and by the time they got back to the house Minseok felt like he’d been jumped on by every dog in the park (the “bad dog” signs were, in all honesty, there to discourage teenage punks, although some dogs in the neighborhood _would_ bite, it was almost always only if their people were being threatened.) Minseok didn’t mind, in fact, he was happy they weren’t really doing much yet. They had Sunday for that, and he was a little tired from being in the car.

“Do you mind going to the diner for dinner?” Minseok’s mother asked him. “Everyone wants to see you.”

“That sounds good,” Minseok smiled.

And so dinnertime found them pulling into the gravel parking lot, right up to their usual spot. There were a lot more cars than there usually were, but Minseok assumed that they had a group of vacationers and didn’t say anything.

That was not the case. Minseok opened the door for his mother, but when he walked in behind her, he realized that the dinner was practically full, and it was all everyone that Minseok had been remotely close to. His friends from school and their parents made up the bulk of the dinner, but several of his old teachers were there, a few of the librarians, different people around town.

“Happy birthday, Minseok!”

Today was officially the most he’d ever spoken in his life. Everyone wanted to know how he’d been, how his classes were going… they were all under the impression that he went to a fancy private boarding school with help from a scholarship now, so Minseok talked about the classes mostly, and everyone was absolutely floored with how far ahead he was now. His old classmates wanted to know how Junmyeon was doing, so of course he told them, and they were happy. There was a lot of “tell him I said hello and to come back with you next time.”

The manager had gotten the cooks to make him a giant birthday cake, enough for everyone to eat. Everyone sang “happy birthday” to him at the same time and the noise was almost overwhelming, but Minseok just smiled. He had missed everyone more than he realized.

He was exhausted when they got back home, but he was happy.

“I didn’t think you’d want to open them in front of everyone,” his mother said as she got something out of her bedroom. “But do you want to go ahead and open these tonight?”

“Yeah!” Minseok smiled. It was a tired smile, but he really did want to.

“I had help with this one,” she said as she passed him a wrapped box.

He unwrapped it carefully, and when he opened the box he almost cried. There were wood photo frames, and inside them were pictures of him, his mother, and his dad. Everything from them smiling on the beach, the one vacation they’d been on which Minseok didn’t even remember anymore, to a two-year-old Minseok in his pajamas, sitting on the counter and watching in open-mouthed awe as his dad flipped a pancake.

“I was going to wait to give you those until you went to college,” she told him. “The wood is from the tree in the backyard of our old house, but since you’re out of the house now, I thought it was a good time.”

“Thank you, Mamma,” Minseok said, blinking back tears as he hugged her.

His mother handed him a second present, this one in a large bag, and when he opened it he really did cry. His dad’s leather jacket. It still smelled like his cologne and Minseok knew his mother was very attached to it, he’d seen her put it over her shoulders and hold it many, many, times. And she was giving it to him…

He fell asleep hugging her tightly.

Sunday passed too quickly, mostly driving around, although they did go see a movie, and just getting to be with his mother again. It was still hard to leave, on Monday morning, but not nearly as hard as it had been the first time. He still held onto his mother until Mr. Sanchez said, gently,

“Minseok, we need to get going, okay?”

It was only the second week of April when they got a call from the lady, Claire. Minseok was in the kitchen helping Kyungsoo wash the dishes (Kyungsoo was washing, Minseok was drying) and so when the phone rang, he picked it up.

“Hello, Clover dormitory, Minseok speaking.”

“Hello, Minseok, it’s Claire.” Minseok suppressed a shudder. She sounded excited, her voice almost breathy.

“Hello, ma’am.”

“I’ll be coming back to the Clover campus tomorrow, and I’m bringing a new student with me.”

“What?” Minseok didn’t mean for his voice to sound so shocked. He actually hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but the lady, Claire, didn’t sound offended.

“Yes, when I told him about Clover he was interested immediately.” Minseok would have thought she sounded smug but he didn’t know if her emotions allowed for that.

“Okay.”

“His name is Yixing, and he’s ten. He’ll be turning eleven, a few months younger than Junmyeon. I know the four of you will have to do some room shuffling. We should be there around four o’clock tomorrow.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” And then she hung up.

Everyone was just as confused as he was, but they got things reorganized. They decided that Yixing would share with Minseok and Kyungsoo, and so got Mr. Sanchez to help them bunk two of the beds so they had room to move in a third.

It was weird, knowing that they were getting a new dorm mate without any of them knowing him before he got there. Minseok and Kyungsoo made room, shifting their things around so they didn’t take up all the dresser drawers or closet space. Sehun and Junmyeon got the sheets and pillowcases washed and the dust beaten out of the comforter.

By four o’clock, they were waiting at the living room window like confused puppies. They watched the lady, Claire’s, shiny car pull up in front, but waited until the back door opened, and then they headed outside.

“Boys,” the lady, Claire, said when they’d all come down the steps. “This is Yixing. Yixing, that’s Minseok, Junmyeon, Kyungsoo, and Sehun.” She pointed to them as she said their names.

“It’s really good to meet all of you!” Yixing smiled. He had a very friendly face, and dimples when he smiled, and an eye smile that was on par with Kyungsoo’s for cuteness.

They got him inside and helped him get settled. Yixing was warm, and his personality matched his face, and something about him made Minseok like him immediately. He asked about everything they did, both what they were learning in classes and all the hiking and everything.

Unlike pretty much all of them, Yixing had not been too put off by the lady, Claire and her, well, entire being, to ignore what she was telling them. He’d seen enough weird things in the city he lived in, and the idea of both learning what those things were and stopping the bad ones had sounded very interesting.

Yixing was a computer genius (or at least as much of a computer genius as a particularly smart ten-year-old could be) and by the end of his first week there had shown Minseok how to do so many things, which he did not remember half of, and Minseok felt a bit out of touch with technology in general. But Yixing was calm and patient, and so showed him how to do whatever he had forgotten over again.

He was cuddly, too. Minseok seemed to be his favorite cuddle-target, since Kyungsoo was a bit like a cat in the cuddle-me-when-I-want-you-to sense. He’d back-hug Minseok while Minseok was washing dishes, lean on him while Minseok was on the computer, and if they were watching TV, Yixing might do anything from falling asleep with his head on Minseok’s shoulder to making his way half into Minseok’s lap. Honestly, Minseok didn’t mind: it was just the way Yixing was, and he wasn’t obnoxious about it.

About two weeks after Yixing had gotten there, the routine changed drastically when Mr. Sanchez told them that Claire had called… and had asked for Kyungsoo. The kid she was trying to recruit was exactly Kyungsoo’s age, a few months younger, and since school was still in session she wanted to try with Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo promptly panicked and Junmyeon spent the evening calming him down and reassuring him that everything would be okay and Kyungsoo would do just fine. That night, Kyungsoo very much wanted to be cuddled, so he and Yixing both crammed themselves onto Minseok’s bed. Fitting the three of them on a twin bed was a feat in itself and by the time they were settled, all three of them were laughing. Yixing clung to both Kyungsoo and Minseok, partly because that was how he was and partly because he would probably fall off the bed if he didn’t.

By the time Kyungsoo was getting in the car in the morning, they had assured him several times that they would take pictures of everything, reassured him several times that he’d be fine, and hugged him until he was smiling.

Still, it was weird without Kyungsoo around. It just didn’t feel right.

“You look like you’ve sent your child away,” Mr. Sanchez laughed when classes started up again and Minseok was still in a funk.

All Minseok could do was nod.

And Kyungsoo was gone a long while. April turned into May, May into June. Minseok and Junmyeon were really fretting when June started to turn into July, and Kyungsoo was still gone. Yixing and Sehun were worried about him too, but they were equally worried about Minseok and Junmyeon and fussed over them at every opportunity. Yixing crawled into Minseok’s bed at night, and the two of them did anything they could to get Junmyeon and Minseok to laugh. Mr. Sanchez, because he was worried about the two of them as well, called the lady, Claire, several times to make sure everything was okay.

It was reaching mid-July when Mr. Sanchez finally came into their dorm with the biggest smile on his face. Kyungsoo was coming back, and bringing a new dorm mate with him. Minseok felt like a two-ton weight had been lifted off of him, and he and Junmyeon scrambled into activity, getting everything ready in record time.

The four of them were outside waiting on the steps for the lady, Claire’s, car, and they all jumped off the steps and surrounded Kyungsoo in a hug the second he got out of the car. They stayed like that for several moments before Kyungsoo introduced them to Zitao.

Zitao was shy, but adorable. The first time Yixing spoke Mandarin to him his entire face lit up like a Christmas tree and he started speaking so fast and so excitedly that Minseok could barely tell those were words coming out of his mouth. He still orbited around Kyungsoo, and pulled Sehun in with him. The three of them got into endless shenanigans, often with Kyungsoo rolling his eyes but then leading Zitao and Sehun, and Minseok got a lot of enjoyment out of just watching them.

It was late July, almost August, when another call came, and this time the lady, Claire, was asking for Minseok.

“What? Why?” Minseok was wary when Mr. Sanchez told him. “Why does she want me?”

“I don’t know, Minseok,” Mr. Sanchez told him. “She has her reasons, they usually work out for the best.”

“It’ll be okay, Minseok,” Junmyeon assured him. “You’ll do fine.”

“It’s not convincing the other kid I’m worried about,” Minseok muttered. Junmyeon heard him.

“I know,” he said softly. “But it’ll be okay. Just make friends with the other kid and hopefully they’ll do what you did for me.”

Of course, the night before he left there was a lot of clinging, and Minseok ended up comforting Kyungsoo, Sehun, and Zitao more than he packed, but he didn’t take much with him. Mostly clothes, but he also took his Gameboy, and Buttons. He couldn’t leave Buttons.

He slept for a few hours, but Mr. Sanchez woke him up around two o’clock in the morning, shaking him gently.

“Minseok, get dressed, we need to go.”

Minseok nodded, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He quietly put on jeans and a t-shirt, but pulled his father’s old sweater on as well. Yixing had looked up weather online and Minseok had decided that it wasn’t cold enough to bring his father’s jacket (which, admittedly, would look a bit silly on him since the sweater still came down to his mid-thigh even after he’d grown a bit) but had decided that the sweater would be a good choice. Plus, it was long and he could curl up in it in the car.

Minseok ignored the shacks just out of sight of the road this time, staring up at the moon, or at least, what he could see of it from the weird angle and the dense trees. He and Mr. Sanchez were quiet for this part of the drive; Minseok was still tired and Mr. Sanchez was concentrating on not hitting any animals that might decide to jump in front of the car’s headlights. The dirt road didn’t give him much room for error.

Once they got off the mountain, Minseok fell asleep. He knew this was going to be a long drive, at least 20 hours if not a bit more, but Mr. Sanchez had wanted to leave this early to give himself a built in sleep break.

They drove through winding mountain roads, around sharp bends that Minseok was sure they were going to slip off of, but Mr. Sanchez just smiled.

“We’re okay,” he assured Minseok. “The weather’s nice.”

As nice as the weather was, the wind still whistled harshly against the car. It sounded like it was trying to ever so gently break the seal on the car doors and slip in that way. Minseok couldn’t help but wonder what weird things lived in these mountains and what they could possibly do.

Very quickly after he got on that thought train, he tried to distract himself with Mario and Pokemon.

They stopped at a rest stop in Utah, and Minseok people watched out the window while Mr. Sanchez slept a few hours. It was bizarre, the kinds of people he saw. The variation. Families of all sizes and races. Couples. Groups of teenagers clearly mid-roadtrip. A woman with red blotchy eyes and tears still running down her face. A tired-looking father in a thin t-shirt and cargo shorts holding a crying infant in much nicer baby clothes. Truck drivers of all kinds and, at one point, a man. He was remarkable in how completely plain he was: not thin but not fat, hair somewhere between blond and gray mostly covered by a baseball cap that wasn’t very worn but clearly wasn’t new. A green polo shirt that was just nice enough to be called clean but also looked like he’d worn it a few days in a row. Jeans so non-descript he could be in a public school textbook. Shoes that were neither new nor terribly worn. A five o’clock shadow on his jaw.

Minseok wasn’t sure if the man had noticed him staring or if the man had been staring first. But the man was looking straight at him and smiling in a way that was showing too many teeth to be completely friendly, but not so menacing that he could call it menacing. He waved, moving his wrist forward and back and kind of wiggling his fingers like a Southern gossip mom saying goodbye to a friend.

Minseok tried to play his Gameboy a bit but still felt like he was being watched. He solved the problem by sticking his head inside his father’s sweater. He ended up falling asleep, and when he woke up they were driving again, and Mr. Sanchez said nothing about a weird man.

The closer they got, the more it rained. At first it started out as a light drizzle but by the time they were crossing the Oregon state line the rain was coming down so hard that neither one of them could see, and Mr. Sanchez ended up driving slowly with his hazards on until it let up a bit.

When they got into town the rain was coming down pretty hard, although not nearly as hard as it had been, they could still see with the wiper blades going. Almost as soon as they reached town, they got into lunch-rush traffic and, with the rain, were at a complete standstill.

Minseok didn’t mind it. There was something calming about it. Sitting in the rain, in the car next to a quiet but smiling Mr. Sanchez, stuck behind a dirty suburban with one working brake light and a bad rear window wiper blade while Minseok played Pokemon.

Eventually, though, they were able to get moving, and they wove through town to the outskirts, with more trees and less cars, until they pulled into the driveway of what looked like an old mansion house, but with a sign that clearly stated it was a historic hotel. The gray sky made the colors on both the house and in the garden look muted, like the rain was quieting the house itself down along with its inhabitants.

“Alright, Minseok,” Mr. Sanchez said. “Here we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was so long in coming! I got bogged down in both grad school stuff and working on my fics for different fests. It's my first year doing fests and I signed up for three! A lot happened in this chapter, and I wanted to get it posted before my semester really got started. I hope you enjoyed it! The next chapter should not be so long in coming, and after that there will be a special bonus Halloween chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

Minseok had no prior knowledge of the hotel, he hadn’t even known he was going to a hotel, he’d just known he was being sent to Oregon, so he hadn’t had any expectations. But even if he had he was pretty sure the hotel would have surpassed them.

It was on the smaller side for a hotel, but in reality it was a fairly large mansion. It was hard to get too much of an impression of the outside with the rain coming down like it was; the hotel itself was painted white and looked like it had been kept up fairly nicely over the years. Enough plant life to make it look inviting. There wasn’t much of a porch on it, but enough of an overhang and a few steps up to keep the area a few feet away from the door dry.

Mr. Sanchez pulled up close to the stairs and parked.

“You go on up, I’ll grab your duffle bag.”

Minseok nodded, and tucked his backpack under his arm. He hadn’t bought a new backpack yet, there was no point, and the area around the zipper was torn in a few places.

Even just getting out of the car and closing the door had Minseok drenched, and by the time he was up on the safety of the porch he was literally dripping. He moved away from the door and wrung out the hem of his father’s sweatshirt and the sleeves so he didn’t get water all over the floor.

Mr. Sanchez opened the door and walked in, and Minseok wiped his shoes carefully before following him.

The entrance was nice, and warm, which Minseok appreciated. Lots of warm brown wood, and a small chandelier that made the whole area glow softly. The floor looked like it had been polished and it made Minseok want to wipe his shoes off even more; they had an outdoor rug just inside the door, and so he stood there while Mr. Sanchez approached the high school boy at the small counter who had just wiped the bored look off his face.

“Hello,” the boy smiled. “Do you have a reservation?”

“I believe Claire said a second person would be joining her?”

The high school boy didn’t even need to look her up:

“Ah. Yes, yes she did.”

“I’m just dropping him off,” Mr. Sanchez smiled, then turned around to find him. “Minseok?”

Minseok couldn’t help the urge to tip toe and mentally sighed in relief when his shoes didn’t squeak; they were dry enough, then.

“Minseok,” the boy said slowly, looking at the laptop like he was going to add his name in. “How do you spell that?”

After his name was added to the register and he was given a key, Mr. Sanchez helped him find the lady’s, Claire’s, room.

The hotel was nicer than any building Minseok had ever been in his life, and it made him uneasy. Yes there were homey touches, and it wasn’t exactly fancy in the movie-style gold-inlay-on-the-wall sense, just… nice. Historic and obviously cared for, with special attention paid to detail. Judging by the furniture sitting out in the lobby, and the paintings on the walls, they seemed to be trying to keep the place looking like it belonged in the late 1800’s. It was weird to think about the hotel being that old, just as far as even thinking of who all had stood in the same spot, walked the exact same route he was currently following. All the wood looked like it had been polished recently, set glowing by the soft yellowish lights from the various fixtures through the halls and public rooms.

They found the room and Mr. Sanchez knocked before using Minseok’s key to open the door.

“Antonio,” the lady, Claire, greeted. Minseok hadn’t been in contact with her for a while; he’d forgotten how smooth her voice was, almost automated.

“And there’s Minseok,” she smiled. Minseok wished he could have forgotten her smile, but unfortunately he couldn’t. It was too sharp, showing too many teeth to look happy or content. Like her lips were stretched too widely, exposing just a bit more than was natural.

Minseok just nodded, and tried not to look at her for too long. Unfortunately she got up and walked over to him, crouching down just a bit too closely, her breath tickling his face as she spoke:

“Your bed is the one by the window. I’m going to talk to Mr. Sanchez for a minute; why don’t you take a shower and get into some dry clothes? After you’re done I’ll bring you up to speed.”

Minseok nodded, and moved around her quickly to get her out of his personal space. He sat on the floor to untie his shoes, setting them neatly by the heater, and pulled his Gameboy and Mr. Buttons out of his backpack to make sure they didn’t get too damp.

As soon as the lady, Claire, closed the door behind her and Mr. Sanchez, Minseok let out a sigh of relief. Two minutes with her and already he had no clue how he was going to make it through this without screaming.

The room was nice at least. The same wood floors, with relatively soft rugs. Two twin beds, a small television on top of a dresser, and several lamps for plenty of light. The only thing that made him nervous was the massive chifferobe in the corner closest to his bed, with dark wood that made it stand out against the warm tones of the room, and a mirror on the front that had definitely seen better days. It looked like it had been there since the house was built and no one had ever bothered to move it.

Minseok got the feeling he shouldn’t look at it for too long.

The bathroom was big enough for two people to be in it at the same time without running into each other. Minseok locked the door behind him before stripping. He wasn’t sure if the bathroom was already cold, or if that was just his skin finally free from his wet clothes.

He showered relatively quickly and dried his hair before getting dressed. He left his jeans and his father’s sweatshirt laying out on the counter and put everything else in one of the plastic bags marked “laundry” that hung underneath the sink. He’d have to ask someone about where to do laundry later.

He unlocked the door and opened it, only to startle when he saw the lady, Claire, sitting on her bed. She didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t turn toward him at all. She just sat on her bed staring at the chifferobe. He hadn’t heard her come in, and he thought he would have at least heard the door open or her heels on the wood floor. He didn’t think she owned flat shoes. But there had been nothing.

“Cl-Claire?”

Her head turned, too sharply, too smoothly, toward him, and a second too late, she smiled.

“Well that was fast,” she said. “Come sit down, I have a file.”

Minseok tried not to sit too close to her, but any proximity felt too close, really. She invaded his personal space almost without even thinking about it, and any of Minseok’s attempts to move away only made him feel like he was being cornered.

The kid he was here to recruit’s name was Lu Han. Apparently he liked being called by his full name, and Minseok wasn’t going to question it. He was Minseok’s age, a month younger, and he’d only moved to America recently. His mother had inherited it from her father and step mother, and they’d moved in late spring.

“I don’t think he has friends,” the lady, Claire, said. “No one comes to see him, and whenever he goes out to play soccer he goes by himself.”

Minseok wondered if the lady, Claire, watched them all like that. He’d never seen her car anywhere but the diner, but had she simply been hidden? Had she watched him play a little with his classmates but mostly retreat under the old tree in the playground to read? Had she told Junmyeon that she didn’t think he had any close friends, even though he seemed to be well-liked?

“It should be easy for you to befriend him. That’s all you need to do.” Her smile was far too wide.

Minseok just nodded.

“Now, why don’t we go to lunch? They have a restaurant inside the hotel. Very pleasant. After we finish you can go exploring.”

If they ate at the hotel restaurant there would at least be a table’s worth of distance between them.

The more Minseok explored the hotel, the more he was unnerved by it. The hotel restaurant was nice enough: small, with a fireplace, and enough people in close proximity to give it some measure of a safe feeling. But the rest of the hotel… the staff were nice, and when he asked about laundry they were more helpful than he’d expected, but the halls themselves just felt… he couldn’t put his finger on the word, but he felt like he was being watched. The little parlor library was the most “safe” feeling room, aside from the restaurant, and even then he could hear too many creaks and groans for it to all be house noises.

There was an old-fashioned study that had been turned into a lounge with a pool table. Minseok took one step into it and immediately felt like he needed to leave. Like he shouldn’t be there. He took the stairs up to the third floor hall and got the same feeling he felt in the Clover dorm… like he shouldn’t look at the ends of the hall too long.

He didn’t run into Lu Han, and after a late dinner he reluctantly returned to the room.

The next day was cloudy, but there was no rain, and so Minseok headed outside. The ground was still soggy, but he wasn’t ankle deep in mud or anything like that, so he decided it was as good a day as any to stay outside.

He was more used to outside being green rather than anywhere from green-yellow to a dead dull brown after being at Clover for over a year, but he still couldn’t wrap his brain around growing up with weather like this. The air was pleasantly cool, the grass was actually thick and looked healthy, and the small animals he could see actually moved for other reasons than a mad dash for their lives.

Minseok hadn’t been out walking long before he heard rustling, movement, from somewhere around the corner of the house. He didn’t get a feeling that this was noise from anything weird, he didn’t feel nervous like he usually did when it was something he should avoid, so he followed it to see who it was.

When he turned the corner Minseok saw a small, fenced-in, yard. The fence was relatively low, and he could see a little garden on the other side, with a few flower beds and flowers wrapping like ivy over an arched trellis. There was a little seating area, too, with lawn furniture just heavy enough to not be blown around by wind, and a small grassy area. There was a sign on the gate into the yard, just big enough to be easily seen but not so big that it was tacky, which read “PRIVATE.”

So this must be the Lu family’s private yard. There was a latch on the gate, but it was missing a lock. And Minseok could see a boy who looked to be about his age and a little bit taller, practicing tricks with a soccer ball.

Lu Han.

Minseok made a bit of noise, just enough that Lu Han would probably look up but not so much that it would be obvious that Minseok was trying to get his attention. Lu Han looked up sharply, but relaxed when he saw Minseok wasn’t an adult.

And now Minseok had no clue what to do. He’d never exactly been a natural at this “making friends” thing; Junmyeon had done all the hard work, and pretty much all of his friends at home had started out as classmates.

“Hey…” Fortunately for Minseok, Lu Han spoke first. “Do… do you play?” He asked, holding up his soccer ball.

“Yeah!” Minseok smiled, and to his relief Lu Han smiled back. “It’s my favorite.”

“Do you want to play a few games?”

“Can I?”

The day was a lot more fun than Minseok had thought it would be. Lu Han was _very_ good at soccer, better than Junmyeon, and the challenge was fun. They had to move out of the private yard after they’d kicked the ball into the trellis a few times, but it was sturdy and there was no damage done.

“Still,” Lu Han said as he locked the gate. “Those were grandpa’s flowers and Mom will have my head if they get trampled.”

When Lu Han’s mother called him inside for lunch, Lu Han brought Minseok with him. Minseok could charm adults, he was used to charming adults more than he was used to befriending other kids, and so by the end of lunch, it was a lot less awkward.

They went back out after lunch, and played until Lu Han said he had to go clean up so he could wash dishes during the dinner shift.

“Can I help you?” Minseok asked him.

“Really?” Lu Han looked surprised. “It’s really boring, I hate it.”

“I’d rather help you wash dishes than stay in my room.” That wasn’t a lie. And he didn’t want to wander the hotel, either. Not after yesterday.

“Okay!” Lu Han brightened fast. “I’ll meet you in the lobby. We can eat dinner before we start.”

The lady, Claire, wasn’t in the room when Minseok got back and for that he could only be grateful. He freshened up and changed at lightning speed, feeling an insistent tug in his stomach to avoid looking at the chifferobe at all costs. He did, keeping his head down the entire time he was turned remotely toward it. And then he was out of the room in just over five minutes, hurrying down the hall; still fueled by the adrenaline telling him to run and don’t look back.

Fortunately Lu Han wasn’t in the lobby yet, so Minseok had time to calm down and get his heart rate back to normal before he got there.

Minseok had thought that washing dishes for a good portion of the evening would have been boring, and if he had been by himself it probably would have been, but instead he had Lu Han. They talked the whole time; laughing and flicking water on each other until Minseok’s shoulder was mostly wet and Lu Han was complaining that his chest was cold.

He helped Lu Han with his other chores too; apparently while the hotel did have a small staff who weren’t related to the family, Lu Han was still free labor and his parents thought he should work over the summer. So the two of them ended up doing everything from helping out the maintenance man, running messages or fetching things for the paid staff, to doing housekeeping for different wings of the hotel when someone called in sick.

Minseok had been worried about how Lu Han would react when he found out Minseok was with the lady, Claire, but he didn’t need to; Lu Han already knew. One day, when Lu Han’s mother had asked them to do housekeeping for the hall Minseok was staying in, Minseok had stopped before they went into the lady’s, Claire’s, bedroom.

“Wait, let me make sure she isn’t in there.”

Lu Han had patiently waited while Minseok quietly opened the door, looked around to make sure the lady, Claire, wasn’t anywhere in the room, before letting out a sigh of relief.

“It’s okay, she’s gone,” Minseok said and, as Lu Han came in behind him, realized what he said and spun around.

“You… did you know?”

Lu Han nodded, “I knew before you got here.”

“I’m not just trying to recruit you, I swear!”

“I thought so, if you were you’re the worst recruiter I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey!” Minseok smacked him lightly, but they both laughed.

Even though the lady, Claire, wasn’t in the room, it didn’t feel any less oppressive. The chifferobe loomed over them and Minseok could see Lu Han avoided looking at it too.

“I hate that thing,” Minseok didn’t know why he said it but he did.

“I do too.” Lu Han didn’t even need clarification on what ‘that thing’ was. “All the furniture that was here originally feels like that. There used to be an old dresser in my room but I kept having nightmares and threw a fit until Mom and Dad moved it out into one of the guest rooms and found something else for me in a garage sale.”

That didn’t sound good.

“I went exploring the first day I got here,” Minseok said. “Honestly, the whole house freaks me out a little. The restaurant feels okay, and the library kind of does, but I tried to go into that lounge with the pool table and felt like I had to leave immediately.”

“You feel like that, too?”

Minseok nodded. “The house is nice, but it just feels like I shouldn’t be here. And Claire is unnerving on a good day but she’s even worse here.”

“Really?” Lu Han asked.

Minseok nodded. “I keep catching her staring at the chifferobe. Last night I woke up and she was standing in front of it, just had her hands on either side and was staring into the mirror breathing.”

Lu Han looked up sharply. “Do you want to get away from her?”

Minseok nodded. “She’s always scared me. There’s something about her, even when she’s at her most…” human “… normal that just feels wrong.”

“Do you want to stay with me?”

“Can I?” Minseok couldn’t hide the relief in his voice if he wanted to.

Lu Han nodded. “Mom and Dad won’t mind, and my bed is a trundle bed. We can just move my nightstand.”

“Thank you,” Minseok could have hugged him.

True to his word, Lu Han’s parents didn’t mind at all, they just smiled and teased him and said that he was definitely doing enough work to earn his keep. Lu Han’s Dad got the trundle bed pulled out, it was the kind where the frame came out and up so that both mattresses were level with each other, and Minseok helped put sheets on it.

The family home might have been a “private access” part of the hotel, with its own small kitchen, living area, and rooms, but while the creepy vibes were much more toned down than the rest of the hotel during the day, at night it was just as bad.

Minseok woke up the first night to find Lu Han squeezing his hand, his eyes wide and scared. But Lu Han squeezing his hand wasn’t what had woken him up; it was the same creaking and groaning noise he’d heard in the library, heard faintly in the lady’s, Claire’s, room, only now it was much louder.

It had a definite rhythm to it, he hadn’t been able to hear that before but now he could. The same steady cadence, like chanting. He realized, though, that he couldn’t tell if it was a voice or not. Even though it was loud it still sounded just enough like creaks and groans that he couldn’t tell if it was a Weird house noise, or if it actually was a voice.

Minseok held Lu Han’s hands, and he could feel him shaking. Minseok didn’t know what time the noise stopped, but it was almost light by the time they were able to fall asleep again.

It only got worse from there. When Minseok listened closely, he realized he could hear the creek and groan chanting constantly. It was louder at night but he could hear it everywhere in the hotel building no matter what time it was. Lu Han could hear it too, and it made him jumpy.

None of the adults seemed to notice.

The more they heard the chanting, the less safe they felt in the house. They played soccer outside until they were laying in the grass panting, and even then they didn’t go in until dinner. They spent as much time as they could around other people, to the point where the hotel staff said that Minseok was doing wonders for Lu Han’s shyness.

Minseok wanted to laugh, he was much shyer than Lu Han.

It was only a matter of time before Minseok dragged Lu Han to the library. He really didn’t have to drag him at all, Lu Han went without protest. Both of them wanted to be out of the hotel for a while, and Minseok was determined to find out what was going on.

Fortunately, Lu Han’s dad needed to go grocery shopping and run errands, so he agreed to drop them off at the library. They knew they’d be longer than errands would probably take, so the plan was for them to take the bus back.

It was very humid. Not raining, but threatening rain, and there was no wind to speak of. The clouds covered the sky and made everything look gray and flat, with flags and signs hanging limply in the stillness, and even the birds and squirrels didn’t move much despite the cool weather.

“THAT’s the library?” Minseok’s jaw dropped open as soon as he saw it.

It was a mammoth building, bigger than anything surrounding it, except for maybe the steeple of the nearby church. It was four stories high and built like an office building. The porch only made it look bigger; the overhang was at the very top of the building, and then columns stretched the entire four stories to hold it up, and behind that the wall was made almost entirely of windows. But the front of the building was almost the only place there were windows at all; the sides of the building, from what he could see, were made of brick and there were only a couple of small windows, and most seemed to be covered on the inside.

“Yeah, that’s the library.” Lu Han nodded. “It’s big for the town, I know.”

It was an understatement. The town wasn’t much bigger than where Minseok had grown up, and their library hadn’t been half this size. What all could possibly be in there?

The ominous feeling didn’t go away when they climbed out of the car and walked up to the building after waving goodbye. The humidity made condensation form on the windows, drops of water forming, growing too heavy, then sliding lazily down the window pane and landing on the dead spiders still in their webs.

Lu Han pulled open the door and ushered Minseok in ahead of him.

Their footsteps echoed almost uncomfortably loud on the floor, despite any attempts to quiet them. They shouldn’t echo that much, both of them were wearing sneakers with softer soles, but with the noise they were making they might as well have been boots or high heels.

The librarian at the circulation desk didn’t look up from her book as they walked in, and past her. She had a spreadsheet open on her computer, with a line only half done, and her drink had a small puddle of condensation around it on the desk, indicating it had been there awhile, but she just stared at her book. Minseok didn’t see her turn the page.

They found a small directory and Minseok was relieved to find that the library did have an archive listed. Fourth floor. He started to take the stairs, but Lu Han stopped him.

“We really shouldn’t take the stairs. I used to but… they don’t feel right.”

“Okay.” Minseok didn’t doubt him.

Minseok had to wonder how bad the stairs were to make Lu Han prefer the elevator. The elevator felt too narrow, like the walls were going to press in on them, and it took a few seconds too long to start moving once the doors had closed. It rattled upward, and as they passed the third floor, something began to scratch the outside. One long noise, like something was caught in the elevator shaft and scraping against the outside as the elevator moved past. The doors took too long to open once the elevator finally shuddered to a stop.

The librarian was clearly surprised to see two twelve year old boys, but brightened once Minseok started asking her questions. After a few minutes, she had them set up at a table with a few boxes.

“How did you know what to ask?” Lu Han whispered. “I have no idea what you even said.”

“There’s another kid at Clover named Junmyeon,” Minseok told him. “This was pretty much all we did last summer before I joined.”

“Dang.” Lu Han looked impressed.

Someone, probably a bored archaeology student, in the past had decided that they loved Minseok and Lu Han, and wanted to make their lives easier, and had already done a chain of title on the house, so all Minseok had to do was look through the collection catalogue for their names.

There was a small folder on one house owner: Delilah Morrison. They looked through it chronologically and at first it didn’t look like much: she’d inherited the house from her parents after they’d both died of unknown causes. She was a subject of town gossip and at first it was fairly dull. She was an unmarried heiress who apparently became a recluse.

And then the articles very suddenly got a lot more interesting. Bodies had been found in the house. Bodies of servants, orphans, local working class… the only reason they’d even been found at all was because a gentleman caller had gone missing and his last known whereabouts were the Morrison house. He was found alive, but had undergone severe torture, and had died in the hospital from complications.

Delilah Morrison was convicted of over twenty counts of murder, and speculation was that she’d murdered her parents to have the entire house for her torture playground. Later articles said that she’d confessed to being a witch, and had used different body parts from humans in her spells.

Both Minseok and Lu Han were still processing it, staring in shock at the last article, when hands on their backs made them jump.

“Sorry to scare you, boys,” the librarian in charge of the archives. “But I’ve got to close the archive soon.”

“O-Okay,” Minseok nodded. “We just finished. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Lu Han echoed, shakily nodding.

They didn’t notice the second scratching sound as they took the elevator back down.

They were both still a bit trembly as they rode the bus home. Both of them didn’t really even want to go back to the hotel, but they knew they couldn’t stay out forever.

They decided not to tell Lu Han’s parents. They really didn’t seem to be too affected by anything going on, and Lu Han was adamant that they wouldn’t get it. After dinner, they stayed outside as long as they could, and played soccer until they were both ready to drop.

Inside the house, they didn’t want to be alone. The creaking and groaning was getting louder now that it was night, and while they still didn’t know what it was specifically, knowing what had happened in the house only made them more paranoid. They stayed in the bathroom while they showered separately; one of them brushing his teeth or changing into sleep clothes while the other showered.

“Can… can we both sleep in my bed?” Lu Han looked terrified already.

“I was hoping you’d ask.” Minseok nodded.

They left the lamp on Lu Han’s desk on, and slept clinging to each other, Buttons squished between them.

When Minseok woke up, the first thing he noticed was that the house was completely silent. No creaks, no groans, nothing that sounded like voices or chanting. The second thing he noticed was the room was dark, and that sent his mind into overdrive.

_She is here._

Minseok didn’t know why that was what popped into his brain, but with it came a sense of urgency and a punch to his gut full of panic. _She is here_. He knew. He knew they couldn’t be seen.

He pulled the blanket the rest of the way over both himself and Lu Han. Lu Han wasn’t awake but his forehead was wrinkled with worry.

It was a little too hot under the blanket, but Minseok didn’t care. She was here. She was here and they couldn’t be seen.

There was no noise to indicate that anyone else was in the room but Minseok could feel someone was in there. He could feel eyes on his back.

In his sleep, Lu Han began to shake.

She was here. She saw them.

Minseok’s eyes were wide open in panic, his brain trying to think of something, anything, he could do and was coming up blank.

She was coming closer to them.

She was coming closer to them and Lu Han was starting to whimper in his sleep.

Minseok tried desperately to hush him as quietly as possible, but Lu Han was too deep in whatever nightmare he was having. It was too late, she knew they were here. She’d known the whole time.

There was no escaping this.

Minseok clung to Lu Han and tightened his fist around the edge of the blanket he was holding.

She shouldn’t be that close. The other mattress should be stopping her. He could feel her right behind him.

And then, ever so gently, he felt her hand touch his shoulder, and heard her make a soothing hum.

Lu Han screamed.

She was gone, and Minseok threw the blanket off of both of them, shaking Lu Han and trying to wake him up. In only a few seconds Lu Han’s dad threw the door open and the overhead light on and both parents rushed into the room.

Minseok was able to wake Lu Han up just as soon as his parents got to the edge of the bed. Lu Han stopped screaming almost as soon as he opened his eyes, but then immediately burst into tears.

He was too much of a mess for his parents to make any sense of what he was saying, but he told Minseok later, after his mom had made both of them tea and they were huddled close on a blow up mattress in front of the living room tv with half the lights on.

He’d had a nightmare about Delilah Morrison. He’d dreamt he was one of her victims, one of the orphans. He shook as he described everything to Minseok, and Minseok thought he might be sick.

Minseok, in turn, told Lu Han about what had happened. That she’d been there. Delilah Morrison had been in the room with them.

Lu Han didn’t want to stay. After three more nights straight of waking up screaming and terrified, Lu Han needed no more convincing. The lady, Claire, told him that there was no way that Delilah would follow him, told him that if his parents hadn’t had trouble with her already there was no way they would.

His parents were very reluctant to let him go, but after another week Lu Han was so paranoid and tired, he and Minseok were staying awake during the night and sleeping outside during the day, that they knew they had to let him go. They were comforted slightly when Minseok assured them that he’d have excellent schooling, and could call home often, but only slightly.

They fell asleep almost as soon as the lady, Claire, had pulled onto the main road and the house was out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope the end of the chapter came out alright! I have trouble making scenes like that come out well so I hope this one did too!   
> This was going to be part of a larger third chapter, but I decided it would work better as a chapter on its own. In a couple weeks I'll have a special Halloween bonus chapter up!


	4. Bonus: Halloween 2002

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a little bonus chapter for Halloween! It falls a little bit after the end of chapter three.

Minseok and Lu Han had gotten back to Clover in late September, so for once everyone was all together for Halloween. They were beyond excited when the beginning of the week before Halloween rolled around and the lady, Claire, hadn’t called anyone to come recruit, especially Junmyeon, since he usually ended up getting called for. If she hadn’t by now she wouldn’t before Halloween.

“We should do something special!” Junmyeon said.

“Something creepy!” Yixing said, grinning at Lu Han and Zitao.

Lu Han elbowed him in the ribs but didn’t say anything to the contrary.

“How about… we go on a hike?” Minseok spoke up.

“How about we go die in the woods?” Zitao pouted.

Minseok smiled and ruffled his hair, putting on an overly cute voice, “come on Tao, it won’t be that bad!”

“Okay! Okay!” Zitao whined, pushing Minseok’s hand away.

“I mean, that would be kinda fun…” Junmyeon did look excited about the prospect.

“Will it be okay, though?” Kyungsoo looked worried.

“We’ll all be together, we should be fine in a group,” Junmyeon said, and started to rub Kyungsoo’s back.

“And it’s not like we’re going to go into any caves or anything!” Sehun smiled.

“Yixing? Lu Han? What do you think?”

“Sounds fun!” Yixing smiled.

Lu Han looked a bit apprehensive, but nodded. “I mean, I haven’t had a chance to be out in the woods much, but if you all think it’s a good idea…”

“We’ll be fine, Minseok, Kyungsoo, and I have probably spent a little too much time hiking out there and we know the woods pretty well. We’ll go on an easy trail,” Junmyeon said reassuringly, shifting as Kyungsoo subtly leaned into him.

“Then I’m in!” Lu Han smiled, and Minseok smiled at him.

“It’ll be fun,” Minseok assured him quietly, “just stick close to me and you’ll be fine.”

Minseok and Junmyeon organized everything leading up to Halloween. They were taking an easy trail and if they were going during the day they wouldn’t need more than a water bottle and maybe lunch if they wanted to be out that long… but they weren’t planning on going during the day. And both boys knew better than to expect a night hike in the woods around the Clover campus to be anything less than unnerving at best. They wanted to be absolutely prepared for whatever might happen.

Kyungsoo supervised. He teased Junmyeon that it was because he was so messy that Kyungsoo didn’t think that even Minseok’s organizational skills could combat it, but all three of them knew it was to ease Kyungsoo’s anxiety about the whole venture.

“Okay, we have flashlights for everyone,” Junmyeon started down the list. They’d laid out everything on the dining room table.

“Two coils of rope,” Minseok checked off.

“Water bottles.”

“Granola bars just in case.”

“Matches.”

“Flare gun.”

“Do we have the satellite phone?” Junmyeon asked.

Kyungsoo shook his head. “Mr. Sanchez fried it the last time we went into that cave with the water entrance.”

“We’ll be okay with the flare gun, I think,” Minseok said reassuringly.

“Two blankets.”

“Tell everyone to grab extra socks,” Kyungsoo muttered.

“S’more supplies…”

“Should we bring a knife?” Junmyeon asked.

“No,” Kyungsoo said, surprisingly sharply. “Not in those woods. Not after dark.”

“You’re right, Soo.” Junmyeon smiled and crossed where he’d written ‘knife?’ off the list with an X.  

“Is that it?” Junmyeon asked.

“I think that’s it,” Minseok replied, and Kyungsoo nodded.

The morning of Halloween, the whole dorm was buzzing with anticipation of the night hike. They did their scary movie marathon in the morning, pulling the curtains closed so the sunlight wouldn’t come in too strongly but leaving a lamp or two and the string of pumpkin lights they’d hung over the stairs on when Zitao whined and Lu Han secretly high-fived him.

Junmyeon was worried about the ratings on the movies they’d picked- the teachers at Clover weren’t exactly monitoring their movie purchases, so more than a few rated R movies found their way into the dorm. The first movie of the day was Silence of the Lambs, which ended with Zitao half on Junmyeon’s lap and nearly shoving his face in Junmyeon’s armpit to hide his eyes, and Minseok fast asleep with his head on Lu Han’s shoulder while Lu Han clung onto his hand.

They worked their way through movie after movie… most of them were not suitable for children by any stretch of the imagination, but with half of the things they’d seen, they just didn’t care and had fun getting scared and nervous; screaming and then laughing about it. Although Junmyeon did cover Sehun’s and Kyungsoo’s eyes when he just couldn’t stand it… Zitao spent most of the time hiding his own eyes. Yixing started providing commentary, which Minseok joined in on, during Children of the Corn that had Lu Han laughing and even Zitao not hiding his eyes by the end.

They were all excited, though, by the time they sat down for dinner. Even Zitao was more excited than apprehensive, the anticipation of a night hike, which they’d never done, getting to all of them. After dinner, they all changed into jeans and sweaters and hiking boots, packing their supplies in their backpacks. Kyungsoo brought a camera and kept it in his pocket so he could get to it without a fuss when he wanted it.

By the time they were locking the dormitory door behind them (Junmyeon kept the key in his pocket even though they usually just left it under the doormat; he knew better than to leave them vulnerable on Halloween) the sun was almost gone. The night air was cooling rapidly, all the faster up in the mountains, and Minseok was very glad they’d all worn sweaters.

There wasn’t even a question about whether to head up or down. Up, the only way to go. Mr. Sanchez had told them time and time again that they must never, under any circumstance, travel down the mountain on foot. They didn’t question it. If Mr. Sanchez was telling them, he was telling them for a reason.

They walked through their recreation area and to the edge of the campus. There was a small clearing, a field of grass beyond the edge of the concrete and asphalt but before the line of trees. Nothing was there, no cars, no buildings… not even any benches or soccer goals. Just nothing.

Like no-man’s land. A barrier.

They took the path closest to their side of campus. It was a pretty easy hike in the day, and led up to an overlook with a fire pit. It wasn’t the top of the mountain, that would mean an overnight hike and no one wanted to do that in these woods, but it was high enough that even in low light it had a nice view of the surrounding woods and other mountains. Junmyeon and Minseok had both hiked up to the overlook on their own to meditate at least once or twice once they’d gotten familiar enough with the path. As a group it was a nice picnic hike when the weather was nice on their days off.

The path was too narrow for more than two of them to walk side-by-side, so they started out in a little line. Junmyeon and Kyungsoo in the front, Sehun and Zitao just behind them, then Yixing, ready to walk and be clung to at the same time in case the younger boys got nervous, and Minseok and Lu Han brought up the rear.

Seven flashlights gave them plenty of light to see by, and the slope upward wasn’t that steep. They could have done it in their regular shoes, but they never knew what they might come across. Still, though, they didn’t make much noise. Minseok could hear Junmyeon up at the front if he listened hard enough, but he almost seemed to be muffled.

They weren’t too far out of sight of the Clover campus when Minseok felt it. Something was watching them, he could just tell. Next to him, he felt Lu Han tense- he’d knew, too, and he started to turn around, but Minseok grabbed his hand and Lu Han stopped the motion to turn and face Minseok.

“Don’t,” Minseok said softly, quickly. “Remember?”

Lu Han tensed in realization, and nodded quickly, letting out a shaky breath.

The “rule” was born out of a terrifying mistake that Minseok had made not too long after he’d gotten to Clover. He’d been coming back from the overlook on his own, a little late for dinner, when the sun was more than starting to set. He’d felt the same prickling feeling like he was being watched, and had turned around.

There’d been nothing, but once he’d turned around once, the feeling didn’t go away, and he hadn’t been able to stop turning to look behind him. When he’d gotten back to the dorm for dinner, he hadn’t locked the door behind him, and for whatever reason, they’d all forgotten to check before they went to sleep.

They’d been thrown into horrible nightmares and night terrors for over two weeks. Kyungsoo had had trouble with sleep paralysis hallucinations, the most frequent being that a dark figure with antlers like an old buck was climbing in through the window, from under the beds, from a crack in the ceiling. Minseok had nightmares that he could still all too vividly remember, and had panicked multiple times because in the dream he’d been wounded, only to wake up and find that he’d bitten his hand or some other part of his body hard enough for it to bleed, and the carry-over of pain from dream to reality had left quite an impression. He’d started sleepwalking, some, too. Junmyeon, however, had gotten the worst of the sleepwalking, waking up in other bedrooms, downstairs, and the final time, outside. He’d been at the beginning of the path to the overlook and had woken up to Mr. Sanchez shaking him.

After that, one of the agents had cleansed the dorm, and they hadn’t had any trouble. But it was a mistake none of them would be making ever again.

They stopped and crowded together at a wide point in the trail, where the path forked. One side was a short cut, and it meant they’d get to the overlook faster by a good ten minutes, but it was a harder, steeper, trail. The other, longer, path was a much steadier slope.

They decided to go down the longer path, since they were all carrying a lot more than they usually did, and they were in no real hurry. Besides, the longer path was a bit wider, too, so they could clump up a bit more.

But when they turned to go down the longer path, Kyungsoo stopped.

“I don’t think we should go this way,” he said softly.

“What?” Junmyeon asked him.

He looked up, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Junmyeon, and everyone else, froze, and then Jumyeon relaxed and nodded.

“Okay, okay, we’ll take the short path. It’ll give us more time for s’mores anyway!”

His voice was forcefully cheery and light in a fake way where everyone knew he wasn’t feeling it, but no one said anything.

Whenever someone new came to Clover, Mr. Sanchez always went over the “rules” of hiking;

  1. Always take water with you.
  2. If you get lost stay in one place so an adult can find you.
  3. Don’t take anything from an animal’s resting place.
  4. If you go out by yourself, come back before dark.
  5. Don’t go into any caves without an adult.
  6. If you have a bad feeling about going down a certain path, don’t. You’ll avoid whatever is waiting for you at the end of it.



They took the short cut without saying another word about it.

The short cut was hard for the younger boys. Zitao could mostly get through it, he was ridiculously athletic, but it involved a little bit of boulder navigating and Minseok was glad that they’d brought rope, for safety’s sake. By the time they made it to the overlook, Junmyeon was carrying Kyungsoo piggy-back, and Minseok was doing the same with Sehun. Lu Han was carrying Zitao, although Minseok thought that was less out of Zitao being tired and more out of solidarity. Yixing was helpfully pushing the two of them along from behind, saying something in Mandarin that sounded like he was teasing Zitao, who was whining at him in a way which told Minseok that was _exactly_ what was going on.

The fire pit at the overlook wasn’t exactly hardcore camping. Some of the Clover agents kept a cheap, but water-tight plastic bin full of fire wood and kindling nearby, so they didn’t have to go hunting for wood. There were wooden benches made out of fallen logs, but they were sanded and sealed cause no one wanted to do that again if they rotted. So once they reached the site it didn’t take long at all to get the fire going.

They stayed out probably a little too long, but they had fun. Between the seven of them they went through a bag and a half of marshmallows and more chocolate than any of them wanted to think about. And of course they told scary stories. It was Halloween, what else were they going to do?

Of course, they were all Clover kids, so each of their stories were true, or at least, true in the way that mattered. Details might have been ironed out, theories drawn, but each of them were speaking from their own experiences. And they all knew it. Which only made it worse.

Yixing started off by talking about where he liked to play in his home town. It was an old abandoned factory by the sea, right on the beach. There was a man who worked inside, the only one, even though the factory still smelled like hundreds of sweaty workers, cigarettes, and a faint smell of burning hair, and he aged a lifetime every day. He was never aware of time passing, of the fact that he came back every single day. He just went on with his daily routine: a teenager by the time Yixing got there in the morning, and would help Yixing with his homework if he needed it, and casually talk to Yixing about his school projects if he didn’t; a man about his father’s age by the time they ate lunch, delighted that Yixing called him “uncle” and so shared his sweet roll with him; and, by the time Yixing left, saying his mom was expecting him for dinner, the man was an old grandpa, hunched over with a stiff back and smiling with missing teeth and a face full of wrinkles indicating a life well-lived. And the next time Yixing saw him, he was a young teenager in the morning again.

After hearing that, Minseok could easily see why Yixing had been so open to the idea of Clover.

Minseok talked about the wildflowers, going so far as to sing the song that he had always hoped to avoid hearing but had unfortunately been burned into his brain.

On and on. Stalkers in the forest. Scratching sounds along every wall at night. A town half populated by people who were just… wrong.

Slowly but surely the night sounds crept into their stories. The crickets grew in volume until Zitao was jumping every few seconds, sure that one was right beneath his feet. Rustling in the underbrush grew more and more frequent, until they were all holding hands as Lu Han finished talking about the hotel.

It was when they heard a branch snap that they knew they needed to leave.

The fire was quickly put out, the rest of their supplies crammed into their backpacks. They felt okay about taking the longer, easier, path down, which was good since none of them thought they could navigate the boulders in the dark.

But they weren’t alone. They knew it. They didn’t dare move their flashlights around, unsure if they would want to know or if they would even see anything. Minseok could feel eyes staring at them again and squeezed Lu Han’s hand as they walked quickly. Behind them there was the unmistakable sound of branches snapping under the weight of something following.

Do not look. Do not look.

They forced themselves to walk even when they could see the clearing up ahead. They walked briskly, but it was still a walking pace. The only indication that something was wrong was the stiff way they held their flashlights, and the silence between all of them.

They kept walking when they made it out into the clearing. They walked straight through campus, past all of the jack-o-lantern’s glowing brightly in the windows of all the apartments and offices. They didn’t remember anyone putting those up.

They walked straight back to their dorm, shuffled inside quickly, and locked the door behind them.

All they could do was laugh, then. They all laughed, first nervously, and then, somehow, genuinely, still clinging onto each other. They were smiling when they unpacked all their gear and put it away, showering and getting changed into sleep clothes.

When they turned out all the lights and tucked themselves into bed, they ignored the wind suddenly picking up outside; whipping through the campus in a way that sounded a bit too much like voices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Yixing's story was -heavily- inspired by Alice Isn't Dead ^^;


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Non-explicit violence

It was so bizarre to be the one coming back to Clover. Every time before now, Minseok had been there already to welcome someone, cleaning and moving furniture around and waiting. This was a journey he had only made once before, coming here for the first time. Every other time had been with Mr. Sanchez and there was a definite change in the mood when he was driving as opposed to the lady, Claire. Mr. Sanchez talked or, when the radio signal was good, played music. With the lady, Claire, there was a distinct dampener over the mood. Minseok and Lu Han talked in the back, quietly, leaning into each other to watch as they took turns on Mario levels. They didn’t speak to her and she didn’t speak to them, save to ask them if they were getting enough air, or if they were hungry.

At some point late at night they stopped at a rest stop to sleep, but Minseok woke up a few hours later and they were already on the road again, with the lady, Claire, still looking like it was the first hour of driving and she couldn’t possibly be tired.

Lu Han leaned into Minseok to watch out Minseok’s window when they reached the mountain that Clover was located on, turning onto the dirt road that led ever upward. Even though there was less light coming in through the trees once they were on the path, they could still make out the little shacks that dotted up the mountain, just barely within sight of the road and only for a moment.

Lu Han looked at him, silently asking.

Minseok could only mouth “I don’t know.”

He started giving Lu Han a drive-by tour, like Junmyeon had for him, once they got to the clearing where the campus was.

“And here’s where we live,” Minseok said as the lady, Claire, pulled up to the dorm.

He watched Lu Han’s face as he looked up at the dorm building, and he thought that Lu Han probably had the same expression Minseok had had on his face when he’d first seen it.

“It’s…”

“I know,” Minseok nodded. The unspoken ‘a little creepy’ was obvious.

Within no time, Lu Han was introduced to the rest of the boys. Minseok couldn’t help but be a little bit jealous of just how fast Lu Han was a part of the group: Yixing and Zitao almost immediately started talking to him for forever in Mandarin, and by the end of the night Junmyeon looked like he was completely won over.

But then again, Lu Han was more outgoing than Minseok was, it was only to be expected, even though the group was much much bigger now.

Life went on. Minseok shared a room with Lu Han and Yixing, and they made a good trio. Lu Han crowded into his bed still when the wind would sound far too much like howling or deep voices to ignore, and both did happen just often enough, sometimes on the same night, and even though Minseok was used to the noise, having Lu Han close with Buttons squished between them did make him feel better.

October came, Halloween passed safely, and they were still left to their own devices. They played soccer, they went hiking, explored caves, swam in the creeks under Mr. Sanchez’s watchful eyes. But most importantly, they learned.

The lady, Claire, said they wouldn’t start going on missions until they were eighteen, but already they were beginning to learn about the creatures and things Clover did have information on. Minseok and Junmyeon were the first to start, since even though Kyungsoo had been there longer than Minseok, he was still young enough.

It didn’t make them feel better. They had hoped that knowing more might give them a sense of preparedness, a sort of peace of mind. But while some things were easier to deal with, for instance, the factory by the sea that Yixing had grown up visiting; harmless really, just weird, but not anything that would leave the single location, others were not. Humanoid creatures, some more on the human side than others, which they had records of but no tracking on. Some that they did have under lock but were extremely dangerous. The lady, Claire, told them (with far too much visible excitement on her face even if she kept her voice distressingly even) about a creature which was docile and dormant most of the time, but whenever the north wind blew in the winter it would become enraged and go after anything with a heartbeat.

“It’s only known weakness is sage,” she smiled. “Fortunately we have it locked away.”

“Where is it?” Minseok hoped that she would stop sounding so excited the more she saw the nervous looks on their faces but the lady, Claire, had a fantastic talent for completely ignoring human emotion.

“In one of the sheds at the base of the mountain. You two don’t have enough clearance yet to know which one.”

Minseok and Junmyeon did not look forward to Creature Lessons.

In late December, they found themselves with another sudden addition to their group. Like when Yixing had joined, the news came as a total surprise, but the whole group couldn’t help but be worried with the look Mr. Sanchez had on his face when he came to tell them.

“What else is going on?” Junmyeon asked.

All seven of them were circled around the couch Mr. Sanchez was sitting on. Kyungsoo had stuffed himself into one of the corners, the throw pillow abandoned on the floor, with Zitao next to him, his legs in Mr. Sanchez’s lap. Sehun had been playing a game on the floor in front of Mr. Sanchez, but his console sat turned off off to the side, and he was now leaning against Junmyeon. Yixing was perched up on the other arm of the couch and Minseok and Lu Han had managed to stuff themselves onto the same beanbag chair, just close enough to still be in the circle. Minseok had been playing Pokemon but now his trainer icon stood still in the grass as he listened.

Mr. Sanchez let out one of the most depressed sighs they’d ever heard him make before he spoke.

“His parents were killed by a creature.”

The room was completely silent, and Minseok could feel his heart break for the kid.

“His name is Jongin, he’s just a little bit older than Sehun,” Mr. Sanchez continued. “Claire called to tell me the two of them will be here in about a week. But I wanted to tell all of you now so that you know to…” Mr. Sanchez trailed off for a moment before he finished. “Just be good to him.”

As if they would have been anything else, but the warning did make sure that they didn’t say something insensitive and make for a poor welcome. Jongin was quiet for a long time, but they made room for him like they had everyone else. After a few weeks he could be consistently found cuddled up next to Kyungsoo. The two of them were both quiet, but they were often joined by Zitao, who was loud enough for all three of them when he felt like it. But even with their company, it was obvious Jongin was still hurting. Of course he would be.

Jongin retreated again when Junmyeon was called away. All of them tried to do different things to help him settle in, but they knew that it was difficult even when someone wasn’t grieving. Jongin had barely left his room, and had only left the dorm building a couple times since he’d been at Clover. Knowing this gave Minseok an idea a few weeks later, but he had to wait for nice weather before he could see it through.

“Jongin, will you come on a hike with me?” Minseok asked as he slipped into the room Jongin shared with Kyungsoo and Zitao. “No one else wants to, and I really don’t want to go by myself.”

That was a lie, but Minseok doubted that would matter.

“Okay,” Jongin said, his voice quiet. It surprised Minseok, he was expecting to have to try and convince him a bit more, but that just made this easier. “I don’t have any hiking boots, though.”

“Your sneakers will be fine,” Minseok told him. “We’re not going far.”

Minseok put a few things in his backpack while Jongin got dressed, and before too long, they were making their way through the clearing towards the trail to the overlook. Minseok had long gotten used to the eerie quiet that covered everything once they made their way into the trees, and if Jongin was bothered by it he didn’t say anything.

He’d gone over the Rules of Hiking with Jongin before they’d left, and Jongin hadn’t said anything about those either, although he’d given Minseok a Look.

  1. _Always take water with you._
  2. _If you get lost stay in one place so an adult can find you._
  3. _Don’t take anything from an animal’s resting place._
  4. _If you go out by yourself, come back before dark._
  5. _Don’t go into any caves without an adult._
  6. _If you have a bad feeling about going down a certain path, don’t. You’ll avoid whatever is waiting for you at the end of it._



Minseok had made sure to add in the parts about never, under any circumstances, going down the mountain from the Clover campus on foot, and about not turning around to look behind you.

“Even if you feel like there is something right behind you, just keep walking. Do not look back, or even turn your head.”

“Are you sure we should be going out, then?”

Minseok nodded. “That’s what I said at first, too. But it’s okay. I’ve gone out by myself a lot, everyone has, except Kyungsoo, Zitao, and Lu Han. The overlook is really easy to get to, and the only time we’ve ever had any problems along here was when we did a night hike on Halloween.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Even though it was the Clover woods, Minseok felt a sort of contentment wash over him: they’d been stuck inside for several days straight because of the rain, but now the weather was nice. A little cold even with his jacket, but then again it was January, and this was the mountains, not Texas. The weirdest thing was that there was no snow on the ground, in fact the path was almost suspiciously dry, especially after it had rained for so many days. Still, Minseok relaxed, letting the breeze whispering through the trees cool the sweat on the back of his neck.

The path really was too dry.

They reached the overlook after a short hike, and Minseok watched Jongin look around.

“It’s pretty,” Jongin said after a moment.

Minseok nodded. “I come up here to think sometimes. A bunch of us come up here for various reasons… just to think, to read, to get away from the adults… sometimes just to yell.”

“Yell?”

“Yeah,” Minseok nodded. “No one knows why, but when you’re up here, no one can hear you on campus. You can yell anything, say anything, and no one will know.”

Jongin looked skeptical.

Minseok brought him to a spot on the edge of the rock where they could see the Clover campus. Lu Han and Yixing were playing soccer on the field outside, and the overlook was just close enough that they should have been within yelling distance, especially given how a shout would echo.

Minseok cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth like a megaphone for good measure, and yelled out Lu Han’s name, then Yixing’s. They didn’t react, they didn’t even look their direction.

“Woah…” Jongin said quietly.

Minseok nodded. “When I say you can yell anything, I mean it.”

He and Jongin spent a good hour yelling. Sometimes random stuff, sometimes things that they were desperate to say but didn’t dare voice out loud on campus. It wasn’t that long before they started yelling thing to the sky about their parents.

By the time they were walking back to the dorm building, they were wiping tears off their cheeks. But it was a good hike. It was a very good hike.

Everything wasn’t always smooth sailing, but Jongin did start to open up, spend less time in his room alone, join them in games both outside and inside, and was more willing to go to lessons. When things did get bad, over time he wasn’t as quick to retreat, or would retreat with Kyungsoo or Sehun. Minseok knew that Jongin would likely never be exactly willing to talk about what had happened, likely never be completely at peace, but at least he could rely on the group of them, rather than feeling like he had to face everything alone.

In late January, Junmyeon finally came back. It was late in the day when the lady, Claire, pulled up in front of the dorm building, and Minseok could see from Junmyeon’s smile that he knew they were all waiting in the window like puppies, and his smile only grew when they ran out to meet him. He introduced the boy who came with him as Yifan. Yifan was tall, a little intimidating to look at, and quiet at first, but any intimidation that came with his resting face was dissolved completely the second he laughed.

Like the rest of them, he was eager to fit in with the group, and it wasn’t long before he and Lu Han were playing game after game of basketball on the rec court. He was easy-going, and fun, and Minseok couldn’t help but like him immediately. It didn’t take Yifan long to adjust to the schedule, and he was as excited about learning new material in lessons as the rest of them were (Minseok might not like Creature Lessons, but he still very much enjoyed the rest of it.)

As always, it seemed like the group had just adjusted to the new member, just found their rhythm again, when Mr. Sanchez asked him to stay late after Minseok and Junmyeon had finished up one of their lessons. It was early April, and a few days ago, Minseok had been able to have a good birthday weekend with his mother. But it felt too short, and Minseok knew without having to think about it that probably all his birthday weekends would feel like that: too short. Mr. Sanchez would barely be pulling out of the trailer park entrance before he was coming back again to whisk Minseok away, after Minseok had soaked up as much time with his mother in his hometown as he could. Whisked away back to Clover, back to everything weird, but also back to his friends. It was a weird feeling, and he didn’t like the way it settled in his brain. It made him grumpy, even toward Mr. Sanchez, who was easily his favorite adult in the entire campus.

The lady, Claire, hadn’t called for anyone in a while, and Minseok knew without Mr. Sanchez even saying anything that that’s what this was about.

Mr. Sanchez got straight to the point:

“Claire needs your help recruiting another student,” Mr. Sanchez was smiling.

Minseok was not. The last thing he wanted to do was end up in a town that he didn’t know for both too long and too short a time. He knew that he’d make a friend in the end, probably, bring someone back with him who could help them eventually sort out all the mess, probably, but the lady, Claire, was… Minseok didn’t want to be anywhere near her.

A simple ‘I don’t want to’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it. He knew that if he said no, then Mr. Sanchez would ask Junmyeon. Kyungsoo wasn’t ready to leave again, his anxiety had been getting worse, and no one else was really ready to convince anyone else to come back with them. And Minseok knew Junmyeon was tired. It was still all over his face.

So he agreed.

The trip was weird from the start. An eighteen hour drive, but Minseok barely registered any of it. He talked with Mr. Sanchez, he played Pokemon, he avoided looking at yet another man in the rest stop who was almost too generic to be real, and yet stared at him with a too-friendly smile, like he knew that he was the only thing Minseok could look at whenever he looked out the window. It wasn’t the same man as before, but somehow Minseok knew they were connected. He registered that they were passing through mountains, headed towards the west coast again, but it didn’t seem like the journey took nearly as much time as it should have. But any time he said something, Mr. Sanchez just made a light comment and changed the subject.

He didn’t like it.

They reached the city, and Minseok had no idea if this was a Big City or not, but it was bigger than anywhere he’d been to and he couldn’t help but look out the window in open-mouth awe. Mr. Sanchez drove through it, taking seemingly random roads but acting like he knew exactly where he was going, and finally took Minseok to a hotel; not quite shabby enough to be a motel, not quite nice enough to attract very many people. Despite all the other hotels they’d passed having parking lots full of cars, with a few circling desperately in search of a spot for good measure, the parking lot of the hotel Mr. Sanchez pulled up to was barely even half full.

Minseok found his escape from the lady, Claire, almost as soon as he could. She gave him the file of Kim Jongdae, and Minseok read it as fast as possible (he’d wanted to take it with him and read it somewhere else but the lady, Claire, had given him such a sharp, almost _angry_ look, and he’d left that alone) before taking the information on his “new school” and leaving for the nearest coffee shop.

As if the drive over, and the hotel, hadn’t been weird enough, his first meeting with Jongdae went nothing like he thought it would. Not the actual school part, that was normal: Jongdae went to a fancy private school (complete with uniforms that probably cost a week’s worth of tips for his mother) and even though he hadn’t been volunteered to help Minseok find his way around, he stuck to him until the other boy left. He was friendly, and sweet, going out of his way to help Minseok to a point that it would have been almost suspicious if Jongdae wasn’t so _genuine_ about it.

No, the weird part came after school. They were walking out of the building when Jongdae turned to him:

“Come on, there’s a park just down the street. My mom usually picks me up there and I’m sure you don’t want to go back to Claire yet.”

“What?” Everything in Minseok’s brain just stopped.

“She didn’t explain?”

“I probably didn’t let her.”

“I’ll fill you in,” Jongdae said, and took his hand to lead him towards the park.

As it turned out, Jongdae already knew quite a bit about Clover. He’d talked to the lady, Claire, already, and had been talking to her for a while. He’d found out what information he’d wanted to know, but he found her as creepy as Minseok did.

“Just be glad you don’t have to share a hotel room with her,” Minseok grumbled.

Jongdae made a face, and Minseok couldn’t help but laugh.

“Anyway,” Jongdae continued after a minute. “I know I can’t trust her, she’s just not…”

“Not right, whatever that means?” Minseok said as they sat on two lone swings.

“Exactly.” Jongdae nodded. “I like the idea of Clover. The things I’ve seen freak me out and the idea of helping to get a handle on them, help other people not have to deal with them, sounds good. And as for schooling… I’m sure you’re miles ahead of the school system here, aren’t you?”

Minseok nodded.

“But I didn’t want to take Claire’s word for it.”

“I see. So how long do I have to convince you?”

“Hmmm… end of the school year? We only have a few weeks left, and it seems silly to deal with that much paperwork.”

“And you’re okay with it? Leaving your family?”

Jongdae’s smile got a little sadder.

“No, no I’m not. But I talked to them about it. My dad thought it was a load of crap at first, but they know what I’ve seen, and after I kept talking about it, he agreed. If I can help people, it’s worth it, as much as I’ll miss them.”

It was very mature, especially since Jongdae wasn’t even eleven yet, but it seemed like something he’d think.

The few weeks that passed were surprisingly relaxing. Jongdae knew Minseok didn’t like the lady, Claire, and so after not too long he invited Minseok over to stay with him. It was less Minseok convincing Jongdae, and more about Minseok telling Jongdae about his experiences at Clover. Jongdae’s mother was relieved to hear about the “normal” parts of his experience; Minseok told her about their teachers, especially Mr. Sanchez, since he checked up on them the most, and life up in the mountains. He told her how it compared with life in Texas, and getting to go home on the weekend of his birthday. He talked about the rest of the group, telling both of them how Junmyeon had recruited him, although he didn’t mention the find in the library’s backlog of newspapers. He saved that for when he and Jongdae were supposed to be asleep. He saved a lot of stuff for then, and didn’t hold back. He told Jongdae about the weird stuff in his town, and about the weird stuff at Clover. He didn’t talk about the Creature Lessons because something in his brain told him that the lady, Claire, would somehow know and wouldn’t be happy.

Minseok didn’t want to see her mad. She was creepy, and intimidating, enough as it was.

Minseok also got to know Jongdae. At first he didn’t know what to make of him: he thought Jongdae was crazy to even remotely consider leaving his family and his (pretty nice, by anyone’s standards) home life. Helping people or no, Minseok hadn’t had any plans to until he was worried about his mother. It had to be fanciful, him not thinking things through.

But then Minseok got to know Jongdae, and he realized that Jongdae _had_ thought it through. Jongdae thought everything through, almost as much as Kyungsoo did. Even at ten years old, Jongdae rarely did anything without thinking about it. If he had an impulsive bone in his body, it wasn’t a large one, and he certainly didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Honestly, Jongdae was probably the most genuinely sweet person Minseok had ever met. It made Minseok want to protect him.

Minseok was loathe to take Jongdae away from his family, especially since he knew life would only get weirder, that Jongdae would see things that he couldn’t do anything about, but at the same time… Jongdae wanted to help. All of them wanted to help. And he already knew Jongdae would fit right in.

A week after school ended, Minseok and Jongdae left for Clover. Jongdae’s mother cried, and his father and brother were quieter than they’d been in a while. Minseok hugged Jongdae’s mother goodbye, and then got in the car so the family could have their privacy. The lady, Claire, just smiled far too cheerfully with too many teeth.

Minseok knew what Jongdae was likely feeling, and knew he likely wanted a little bit of space to be upset, as he had every right to be, so Minseok didn’t try to make any kind of conversation until Jongdae started it. The drive back was surprisingly normal. They linked their Game Boy’s and had Pokemon battles, battled for who could complete a Mario level the fastest, talked about various landmarks that passed by the window, and occasionally got the lady, Claire to pull over at a gas station or diner by the side of the highway.

She ate the same way she did when Minseok had first met her. Almost robotically, not weird enough to be anything but human but not normal enough to be completely human. Like she got no enjoyment from the food whatsoever.

Minseok and Jongdae shared Looks but said nothing. The lady, Claire, just smiled with too many teeth, which shone out at them straight and perfect, and abruptly reminded Minseok of headstones at a military cemetery.

When they got back to Clover, Jongdae fit in, like Minseok knew he would. He roomed with Minseok and Lu Han, and didn’t complain when they made him take the top bunk on the bunk bed, while Lu Han took the bottom and Minseok got the single bed. He put glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, and Minseok couldn’t help but love them.

Just as predicted, as soon as they’d gotten into the rhythm of having another person in the group, Junmyeon was called out again, but this time came back with no one. Weeks turned into months, months to a year. Junmyeon was called away a few times, but came back with no one. Kyungsoo was called out twice and came back with someone each time: Baekhyun and Chanyeol.

Life went on. Years passed. One by one, they all hit puberty and got The Talk from Mr. Sanchez, which was traumatizing. Minseok and Lu Han had already gotten The Talk before they’d ended up at Clover but Jongdae hadn’t and he gave them a play by play of what Mr. Sanchez had said. His voice cracked in the middle of it and he threw his pillows and Minseok and Lu Han when they laughed.

“Your first voice crack!” Minseok cooed at him to tease him, and Jongdae could only whine at him.

It was the kind of crazy only a house full of teenage (or soon to be teenage) boys could be. They argued sometimes, but usually fights or grudges were broken up fairly quickly. Having the woods nearby to, quite literally, run off to for some alone time, or the Overlook where they could make all the noise they wanted to and say anything without fear of being heard helped with that. They learned to live with each other, they learned who could share a room, and who made terrible roommates, even if they were attached at the hip usually.

They learned to live in the house, too. Not all of the rooms were occupied, but with twelve boys there was more than enough noise to chase away most of the creepy vibes. Minseok could finally walk to the end of the hall and look up at the windows, which still had their lacy white curtains, even though all of them agreed that it made the hall look like something out of a haunted house movie. They still felt the need to run to their rooms as soon as all the lights were off, they never went to the bathroom alone for fear of the silent spaces growing too large, and something developed where all of them slowly but surely became too nervous to look up at the kitchen window while they washed dishes and no one knew why. Eventually they figured out that as long as they said “and I don’t need company” before they showered, they could avoid the feeling of something large breathing down their necks while they were inside. Chanyeol said it reminded him of a horse breathing on him, but not at all comforting.

All of them learned to ignore when the wind sounded too much like howling, or singing, or whispers.

They focused on what was comfortable. The sound of Yixing’s fingers on the computer keyboard. The noise that followed Jongdae, Chanyeol, and Baekhyun (and Kyungsoo, since all three of them dragged him along no matter what they did.) The weird smell that filled the downstairs every time Jongin went on a cooking spree, because he didn’t change the foil on the baking sheet before putting chicken in the oven for dinner from when he had made chocolate mint cookies earlier in the day. Lu Han and Yifan softly singing along with Minseok’s CD player while he played TVXQ’s entire discography while he cleaned. They had it memorized, and could occasionally get him to branch off if Lu Han turned on the puppy eyes. When Minseok finally bought an ipod it was easier, since he did actually have other music on it and all they had to do was shuffle it again.

They went through their phases together: there was the summer they had what amounted to a Pokemon war, for which Junmyeon had been the definite winner and they had all found out that Kyungsoo knew more curse words than they thought he had. There was the year when no one cut their hair, leaving it long and, in some cases, feathery, until Mr. Sanchez had begged them to cut it because, in his words “it feels like I’m teaching an emo boyband.” They’d played Linkin Park the entire time he was over to help make dinner to tease him but did, eventually, all cut their hair, or at least style it a bit better. There was the year that Yifan decided he wanted to learn rock climbing and repelling properly, and had gotten several of them (mostly the younger kids) to join him, which gave Junmyeon, Lu Han, and Kyungsoo minor heart attacks for different reasons.  

When they all finally had cell phones, staying in contact with their families became easier. Minseok sent his mother money so that she could get one that didn’t break every time the wind blew a different direction and had actual storage space for more than a handful of pictures, and once she got texting it was even easier. He could send her more pictures, tell her about stuff happening as it was happening, and she loved it.

It also made it easier to stay in contact once they all, one by one, started missions.

Each of them started going on missions once they turned eighteen, and that meant Minseok was first. Mr. Sanchez assured him that he’d learned enough in Creature Lessons that there wouldn’t be an issue. Minseok was at least happy that Mr. Sanchez was going to go with him: he didn’t think he could handle it if the lady, Claire, had been the one to take him instead.

“This is more like practice for when you’re older,” Mr. Sanchez told him. “We have contacts; they’re also creatures themselves, who do a lot of the scouting for us. These first few missions will be to introduce you to some of them, let them get to know your face, and for you get an idea of what goes on.”

That implied that Minseok hadn’t really been told what went on behind the scenes at Clover, but after years of living on the campus, it bugged him less.

“How long until I start doing these on my own?” Minseok asked him.

“What, eager to run off?” Mr. Sanchez teased him.

“Yeah, that’s something I’d do.” Minseok joked back.

Mr. Sanchez laughed, then said: “that’s really up to Claire. I’m not exactly sure.”

Minseok nodded, and wasn’t sure why he had expected anything different. Everything was always up to the lady, Claire, and that still made him wary.

The first mission was easy, a couple hours’ drive away. They had left Clover when it was dark out, Minseok still closed his eyes to keep from seeing anything among the shacks at the base of the mountain: hostile creature storage, he knew now. It was early spring: still cool enough for a sweater during the day, and a little colder than Minseok would have liked at night, making him bury into his father’s old sweater until Mr. Sanchez turned on the heat. Since it was so late, they passed very few cars, either following along the same direction they were, or going the opposite way. Quiet, with the radio on, some easy-listening folk station playing softly as an undertone to the road noise.

“We’re here,” Mr. Sanchez said out of nowhere.

Minseok looked around, and was immediately confused. “Here” didn’t seem to be, well, _anywhere_. He couldn’t see any lights from any nearby towns, or even any dark silhouettes of hulking buildings against the night sky. He knew he hadn’t seen any road signs proclaiming that they were “now entering” anything.

Mr. Sanchez pulled over to a rest stop. It was a quiet little thing: a few covered picnic tables just barely within the light of the single street lamp, some slightly scary looking restrooms just out of reach of the ring of light the lamp let off, but making their own sort of light with the two vending machines plugged in just outside the doors. Other than the two of them, it was completely deserted.

Wait, no. Minseok realized as he scanned over everything again. The stop had one other person there, but no other cars. Minseok had missed them at first, they were sitting just barely in the shadows of one of the covered picnic tables.

“Remember, Minseok,” Mr. Sanchez said softly. “They work with us.”

They were completely androgynous, but looked human. They reminded Minseok of the people he saw at rest stops: the ones both impossibly generic but weird at the same time. Minseok couldn’t tell why, nothing about them was generic, but his gut feeling told him that they were connected.

“Antonio,” they sounded relatively happy when they called out Mr. Sanchez’s first name as he and Minseok got closer.

“How have you been?” Mr. Sanchez didn’t call them by name.

“Well enough, well enough.” They nodded, and then looked at Minseok. “Who’s the little kid?”

Minseok bristled internally, though he tried not to show it on his face. Yes, he still didn’t fill out his father’s sweater, the sleeves still reached past his hands and the hem almost covered his behind, but it wasn’t exactly comically oversized like it used to be and Minseok liked to think that he looked old enough not to be called a kid.

Still, he said nothing, because he knew very well by now that even the most innocuous looking creatures could be secretly dangerous.

The meeting wasn’t much, the three of them just talked; Mr. Sanchez talked about Minseok and everyone else, letting the creature know what was going on. The creature spoke vaguely, but Mr. Sanchez seemed to know what they were talking about, and Minseok managed to not look confused.

When Minseok and Mr. Sanchez were getting up from the table, the creature stopped Minseok.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

“Sure don’t.”

They let out a short, loud, bark of a laugh. “Ha! I like you, kid.” They turned to Mr. Sanchez. “Tell Claire I want to work with this one.”

And that was it.

Minseok ended up going on several introductory missions over the years, spread few and far between. Sometimes he had more information, sometimes he didn’t. They never met up anywhere normal. Sometimes it was during the day, but in the middle of a suspiciously deserted mall, or an entire conversation held while sitting on a fence by the side of a vacant one lane farm road. He was always “the kid” and he didn’t really like it but also didn’t say anything.

As everyone else turned eighteen, they started going on missions too. Just introductory missions, like Minseok had been. But nothing really happened until a few months after Sehun became of age.

The lady, Claire, called for him. It was beyond weird, they hadn’t had anyone new join Clover in years, but they didn’t question it. Junmyeon fussed over him, they all did more or less, and Zitao clung until Mr. Sanchez came to get Sehun.

But unlike when they were kids, they could actually keep in contact. Sehun texted pictures from the car, passing through mountains, cool cars he thought Zitao would like, lots of pictures of the sky. At one point he texted a picture of one of the impossibly generic people Minseok had seen with just the caption “the heck?” and Minseok told him to just keep his head down and not look at them too much.

It wasn’t easy having Sehun gone, but it was easier with the texting. Sehun was supposed to be recruiting a girl (everyone had a moment of shock) named Seulgi. From what Minseok could gather, she was sweet, a little sassy, and he could tell Sehun was happy. It was only a week or so before they started getting selfies of the two of them making silly faces, clearly only at a coffee shop at first, but what expanded to a park, a movie theater, and a few other places that were probably landmarks that none of them knew in the weeks following.

According to Sehun, she was interested, but didn’t want to leave her grandparents. Sehun was gone for over two months, almost three. Almost three months of texts about Seulgi, pictures of the two of them around the city, and at one point he gave Seulgi all of their phone numbers and she started asking them questions individually. She told Minseok that her grandparents were getting older, and were starting to rely on her more and more. They had pretty much raised her, and even though they were telling her that Clover sounded like a good opportunity, she wasn’t planning on leaving them.

Almost three months, and then Sehun came back. All of them were a little disappointed, they’d all grown to like Seulgi, but they understood. Family was family, and they could see why she wouldn’t want to leave her grandparents; Minseok knew that if he hadn’t thought his mother was in danger, he wouldn’t have left her if he could help it. Seulgi still texted all of them occasionally, but mostly Sehun. She updated him on how college applications were coming, what she was doing, and he told her what he was doing, or took pictures on hikes to text to her. He was a little withdrawn, a little sad, as happy as he was to be back with them, and they all knew why.

It was only a few weeks before it happened. They were all cleaning up from dinner, when Sehun’s phone rang, and he picked it up immediately, a smile on his face.

“Seulgi!” he said happily, but the smile quickly dropped from his face. “What’s going on?” A moment later, “I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

All of them went completely quiet and still; they could hear Seulgi’s quick, almost frantic breathing, before she started to speak. Her voice was soft, and low, but obviously scared.

“I started seeing him a few days ago,” she began. “I’d see him in the park when I walked by. Across the street at the sandwich place while I was in the coffee shop. I knew he was a Weird Thing as soon as I saw him. I can’t put my finger on it, it’s like… he’s too generic to be real.”

Minseok felt a shock of cold run up his spine.

“Today he was on my bus, when I came home from grocery shopping. I lost him while I was walking home, but I’ve felt weird ever since. Grandma and Grandpa are out at the senior center, and I was just cleaning up the kitchen when I saw him across the street. I finished and came upstairs, and he was at my neighbor’s mailbox. I haven’t looked outside since…”

They could hear the sound of creaking, like a mattress, and then Seulgi gasped.

“He’s gone, I don’t see him, but…”

“Get in the closet,” Sehun told her. “Hide in the back.”

“Okay…” Shuffling, like she was getting off of her bed, and then she gasped, and there was the sound of a door closing quickly.

When she spoke again her voice was even lower, and shaking. “He’s inside. I heard glass breaking.”

“I’ll call the police,” Junmyeon said, and Yixing hurried to look up the phone number for the specific station so that they wouldn’t have to worry about rerouting.

They could hear Junmyeon talking in the living room, but their eyes were all locked on Sehun’s phone. Seulgi was whimpering quietly, and Sehun was softly reassuring her that she would be okay. She had to be okay.

They could hear whistling. Muffled, like it was coming from outside of the closet, but if they could hear it then the man was too close. Seulgi was trying to muffle her own sobs, and Sehun’s voice was getting more and more frantic.

The creaking of a door opening.

“Did you think you could hide from me?”

A moment’s pause, and then Seulgi screamed. There was a noise like several cats hissing, but distorted, too deep, and then she screamed in pain.

“Sehun!” Her voice was desperate.

Sehun kept screaming her name, tears already streaming down his face, and Zitao was crying too. She kept screaming, and the man kept hissing. They could hear Junmyeon speaking frantically into the phone in the living room. There was nothing they could do, helpless to do anything but stare at the phone like sheer willpower would save Seulgi. They didn’t know what was happening, but then Seulgi screamed out Sehun’s name one last time, her voice desperate and tired… and then the call ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter took a very long time and isn't as good as I was hoping it would be. I've been working on fests and other fics, also grad school might as well literally be punching me in the face, and my doctor put me on sedatives for a few weeks so it's really pretty good that I have this up at all.


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